Honest John Vane: Part Iii
VI.
IN short, honest John Vane was so abundantly tempted and harassed by the lobbyists and their Congressional allies, as to remind us of that hardly bested saint whom we have all seen in ecclesiastical picture-land, surrounded by greater and lesser goblins and grotesque manifestations of Satan.
Virtue was the harder for him to follow after, because he perceived that the vicious were not only enviably prosperous, but walked in their evil ways undiscovered. The skinny leanness of his own honest porte monnaie was all the more obvious to him when he contrasted it with the portly pocket-books of the slaves of the ring. While he foresaw that it would be difficult for him to bring the year round on his salary, there was Potiphar of New Sodom taking in one hundred thousand dollars for “putting through” a single bill. While his brilliant Olympia was sitting solitary and sorrowful in her two dingy rooms, plain Mrs. Job Poor, the wife of a member who supported the iron interest, kept open house in a freestone block, and rolled in her carriage. It seemed to him at times that, if there was a city on earth where integrity got all the kicks and knavery, all the halfpence, that city was the capital of this model Republic.
Nevertheless, he held fast by his righteousness and remained worthy of his reputation. Give a dog a bad name and he will deserve it, says one of the wisest of proverbs. It is equally true that if you give a dog a good name, he will strive to deserve that. In these days, when temptation sought to bow Vane into the dirt, it was a greatly supporting circumstance to him that he had received the title of Honest. Now and then he was cheered and strengthened by seeing himself eulogized in newspapers under this Catonian epithet. Occasionally too the organ of a ring would boast (falsely) that honest John Vane had decided to vote for its particular swindle, — a fact which showed that the name had become a synonyme for respectability and was reckoned able to carry weight. He was a better man for this honorable “handle”; it had the elevating influence of a commission as “an officer and a gentleman”; it inspired him to exemplify the motto, Noblesse oblige. In spite of recurring enticements, he struggled on through the session, without letting his hands be soiled by the first dirty dollar.
In the mean time his dear Olympia had been a greater trial and stumblingblock to him than the lobby. Not that she consciously meant to trip up his integrity; on the contrary, she hardly gave a serious thought to it. Her desire was that her husband should take the political leadership which belonged to him, and, what was of course much more important, should give her the fashionable eminence which belonged to her. She had early discovered, to her amazement and disappointment and vexation, that a Congressman was not necessarily a social magnate in Washington. If he was rich or potent, he was reverenced ; if he was poor and uninfluential, he was neglected: his mere office had little to do with the matter. There were members whom the legislative world and the stylish world did not make obeisance to; and of these members her John, whom she had partly selected because of his supposed greatness, was one. She soon found that the wives of Cabinet secretaries and of senators and of the chiefs of the great committees regarded her as their inferior. Many of them did not ask her to their receptions, and only returned her calls by sending cards. Spurred by her eager desire to commune with the ultra genteel, she committed the imprudence of attending one senatorial party without an invitation, and was treated with such undisguised hauteur by the hostess that she went bedridden with mortification for three days.
Even her beauty, which had secured her so many university beaux in Slowburgh, seemed to have no charm here. Few noted gentlemen called on her, and not many of these called twice. Whenever by good luck she got to a reception, there was no swarming of fascinated male creatures about her, and she was free to pass the entire evening on the arm of her husband. She had anticipated romantic attentions from foreign secretaries and perhaps ambassadors ; but at the end of the session she did not know a single member of any one of the diplomatic corps ; the only alien individuals who came with music to her windows were monkeys and their masters. for a time this neglect was a puzzle to her, and personally a most humiliating one. Her beauty and graces were so obviously ineffective that she began to doubt whether she possessed beauty or grace, and to feel in consequence that she was of no worth, and even contemptible. Eventually, however, she obtained light on this subject; she perceived that her husband was right in affirming that everybody in Washington " had an axe to grind ” ; the natural result being, that gentlemen would not spend their time in paying court to ladies whose male relatives had no favors to confer. At first it was a dismaying discovery, and she very nearly wept with vexation over it, and tried to despise the world for its sordid selfishness. But before long, moved by her habitual reverence for society, she drifted into a disposition to take it as she found it, and would fain have won its homage by a show of that wealth and power which it demanded. The first step to this end, of course, was to get out of her commonplace lodgings and ascend to a grander style of living.
“ O, I do hate these dirty, povertystricken barracks ! ” she moaned, more bitterly than ever. “ I see plainly that we shall never be anybody in Washington as long as we pen ourselves up in two little vile rooms. You ought to take a house, John, and give receptions and dinners, for the sake of your own career. You would get a great deal more influence that way than by fussing over papers in committees and making speeches.”
Then followed the old, stale discussion over the expense of such a route to glory, the husband ending with his usual meek but firm declaration that he dared not risk it. Thereupon Olympia cried harassingly for an hour or more, and sulked in silence for a day or two. It seemed as if some alien and naughty soul had migrated into her since the engaged days when she rayed forth graciousness and amiability. The broad fact is that, so far as the masculine outsider can discover, most girls have no character until marriage. Then for the first time they enter openly upon the struggle of life, and then the strong traits which have hitherto remained invisible come out boldly, like certain chemical inks when exposed to the fire.
The result of this severest of Olympia’s many sulkings was a compromise. John Vane held on in his frugal or semi-frugal lodgings, but he allowed his wife to give frequent dinners, and also evenings with ice-cream. But such a lame, halt, and beggarly lot as appeared at these cheap, cold-water festivities ! It seemed as if the host must have gone out deliberately into the highways and hedges of political life and forced them to come in. There were Congressmen who were just like John himself, — mere tyros and nobodies in the great world of statesmanship, members of the little committees or of no committee at all. There were members from carpetbagdom who had not yet secured their seats, and delegates from the territories who looked as though they might represent the Digger Indians. Occasionally there was a sharp wire-puller or a sturdy log-roller from Slowburgh, and more rarely a respectable citizen of that place, who had come on to stare around Washington. One evening Olympia was nearly driven into hysterics of mortification by discovering that her husband had brought in a Mormon. She treated the venerable representative from Utah as she had herself been treated at Senator Knickerbocker’s, and subsequently informed Honest John several dozen times that he had ruined their position in society.
“ I thought the old fellow would be a curiosity and amuse you,” pleaded the husband. “ You are always saying you want amusement.”
“Not that kind,” tossed Olympia, utterly out of patience with his stupidity, and thinking that by this time he ought to have comprehended her better. “Low people may amuse you, and I know they do. It is really one of the great faults of your character, John. But to me they are simply strange and odious bores. Can’t you understand, once for all, that I want such amusements as other ladies want, — good society and genteel surroundings and — and nice things ?”
“ O yes ; you want to dine with the British Ambassador, and ride in a coach with liveries,” grumbled John, restive under this pestering, because he was yet sore with preceding ones.
“Well, what woman in Washington does n’t ?” retorted Olympia, justifying herself in her own eyes with lamentable facility.
“ I suppose you don’t think there’s anything fine in having an honest man who does his duty and nothing but his duty,” groaned Vane, referring with pardonable pride to himself, but fretting under the knowledge that his wife did not share that pride.
“O, there are so many honest people,” sniffed Olympia, eager to“ take him down,” “they are as common as chips.”
“ Not in Washington,” returned this unappreciated Aristides, with a bitterness which was only in part patriotic.
Such little tiffs as this, I regret to avow, soon became frequent. Olympia, having discovered that potentiality in politics was necessary as a basis for social eminence, began to interest herself disagreeably in her husband’s Congressional doings, and to rub peppery remarks into him concerning his obligation to be eloquent, able, managing, and, in short, successful. She informed herself as to what committees were the important ones, and demanded of him why he was not on any of them.
“ Because I am a young member, I suppose,” answered John, a little sulkily ; for the fact in itself was an irritating one, let alone being “talked to” about it.
“ But here you are on the Committee for Revolutionary Pensions,” persisted the ambitious lady. “ It is almost an insult. There are only three or four Revolutionary pensioners left. Of course there is nothing to do.”
“ Well, we do nothing,” granted John, ungraciously. “ Somebody must do it.”
“You ought to try to get on the Committee of Ways and Means, Mrs. Bullion says,” continued Olympia. “ That is the great committee, she says. Why don’t you ? ”
“ Why don’t I try to be President ? ” exclaimed Vane. “ I am trying, I am doing what work comes in my way as thoroughly and honestly as I can. If I stay here long enough, I suppose I shall get higher,” continued the poor catechised man, who really had in him some industry, perseverance, and common-sense, — materials of character which might in time be worked up into a fair lawgiver.
“ Why don t you push your bill about that — that privilege ? ” was the next question of the stateswoman. “That would make a sensation.”
“ They smothered it in committee,” confessed the husband. “ What could I do after that ? ”
“There! now you see!” exclaimed Olympia. “ You see the need of being on the leading committees. If you had been a member of that committee, you could have stopped their smothering it.”
“ No, I could n’t,” contradicted John, naturally indignant at being blamed for everything, both what he did and what others did. “If I had been on it, I should have been a minority of one, and the bill would have been smashed all the same. The fact is, that Congressmen in general are determined to hold on to the franking privilege.”
“ Did n’t I tell you ? ” cried Olympia, remembering that she had once counselled him not to urge unpopular measures, — “did n’t I tell you so before we were engaged, and ever so many times since ? I told you to give up that old thing and plan something that could pass. O, I wish I was a man ! ”
Remembering that if she had been one, he should not have fallen in love with her, Vane was tempted to reply, “ I second the motion.” But he restrained himself, for he had a magnanimous streak in him, and he was really very fond of his wife.
In these days Olympia was both sore and prickly with a consciousness of her husband’s incapacity ; she was as uncomfortable and as discomforting as a porcupine might be whose quills should be sharp at both ends. She was always comparing him disparagingly with somebody, — with that well-descended gentleman of the old school, Senator Knickerbocker; or that opulent gentleman of a new school, Senator Ironman ; with the Speaker and thechairman of the Finance Committee, and that elegant Potiphar who had taken the hundredthousand-dollar fee ; with the noted orators who had the ear of the House, such as General Boum and General Splurge. She still liked John — in lonely moments ; when they were by themselves of an evening, she often clung to him with a sense that it was sweet to be loved and protected ; but all day she wished that he were more respected than he was and greater than he could be. At times she had an idea, or perhaps I should say a feeling, that he had palmed himself off on her by false pretences. Had he not married her in the guise of a political giant, and was he not an indisputable political dwarf ? Other men made great speeches which stormed the admiration of Washington, or “ engineered something through Congress ” which had the effect of putting their wives into freestone mansions. Not so with her husband ; he was a nobody, politically,socially and financially ; and it was all his fault too, for she wanted it different.
But, at last, and as if by a mere freak of fortune, a beam of prosperity lighted her path. Senator Ironman, who was worth two millions at least, encountered her by chance at a reception, paid her some flattering attentions, called upon her a few days later, and cajoled his wife into calling. Glad and proud indeed was Olympia over the acquisition of this patrician intimacy, the pass to all the selectest dress-circles and most exclusive private boxes of that complex theatre, the social life of Washington. Finally her beauty had availed her somewhat; it had brought her in an hour more that was of value in her eyes than she had derived in many months from her husband’s public services and reputable name ; and, as beauty triumphant will do, it bloomed out with increased splendor. John Vane thought that he had never seen his wife so handsome as she was on the evening in which he took her to Ironman’s great party, the grandest crush of the season. It was even very delightful to the honest, unsuspecting soul to note how the rich and arrogant senator evidently admired her, and how much he walked and waltzed with her. And, if Mr. Vane liked it well, you may be sure that Mrs. Vane liked it better. She was throbbingly happy, whether on the great man’s arm in the promenade, or on his shoulder in the dance. The deep flush of her brunette cheeks and the liquid sparkle of her dark eyes revealed a stronger agitation than had possessed her for many a day. People stared at her a good deal; they called her “a stunner,” and thought her a little venturesome ; various gentlemen, who knew Ironman well, exchanged queer glances ; certain ladies, who were equally informed, gazed sidelong at Mrs. Ironman. None of these disquieting circumstances, however, were visible to our two innocents from Puritanic Slowburg. They passed an entirely delightful evening, and then walked economically but contentedly home, telling each other how nice it had all been.
Thenceforward Mrs. Vane led a cheerier life of it. She was invited everywhere,and Mr. Ironman wasalways delightfully attentive, and consequently other people paid court. She no longer found the Washington receptions unsocial, heartless, and stupid, — mere elbowings of selfish people who either did not know each other, or only wanted to use each other, — the dreariest social gatherings perhaps that ever gaslight shone upon. The favor of the rich senator and of his adherents and parasites irradiated these doleful caucuses to her eyes with interest and gayety. Moreover, Mr. Ironman did not restrict his courtesies to occasions of festivity. His carriage (not his wife’s, but his own special turnout) was frequently seen at Vane’s humble door. He took Olympia in it all over the surrounding landscapes, to the reservoir hill back of Georgetown, to the soldiers’cemetery at Arlington, and to other similarly inspiring eminences whence one can see a great ways, though not into the future. Furthermore he gallanted her to the Capitol, to the Smithsonian, to the theatre, and to concerts. Likewise he sent her bouquets, and after a time finer presents. In fact, his assiduity gradually verged into such an appearance of courtship that there would have been talk about it, if Washington society had not been charitable even beyond Christianity in its judgments, and also absorbingly intent upon affairs which were more prof; itable than gossip.
It was, however, a perilous business for Olympia, this daily communion with Ironman. The senator was one of those infrequent and yet discoverable statesmen who value distinction among men mainly because it helps them to captivate women. Although he was, to speak with considerate vagueness, not under forty, he had that restless passion for “ conquests ” which we scarcely pardon in the novice of twenty, eager to secure acknowledgments of the puissance of his individuality, or, in other words, to show that he is “ irresistible.” There was not a session during which his proud, calm, mature Juno of a wife did not have occasion to wonder what sort of common mortal her Jove would run after next. This patient or indifferent lady, by the way, had taken very kindly to Olympia, considering her a young person whom it would be respectable for Ironman to drive about with, and who would keep him from making himself ridiculous by sending bouquets to treasury girls.
But absurd as the senator was in the eyes of his spouse, he could not seem absurd to Mrs. Vane, at least not immediately. His very rage for gallantry made him attractive to a woman who knew by experience the sweetness of flirtation, and who, for months past, had been confined to very short browsings of it. As for his shining state on the alps of society, and the entirely solvent, redeemable, coinable wreaths and vapors of opulence which hung about him, not only were they circumstances such as she had always looked up to with admiration, but they seemed more dazzling than ever, viewed through the atmosphere of Washington. It is true that this wealth was mainly the result of special enactments, not beneficial to the masses ; that the rich statesman had enormously increased his riches by operations which he had himself helped to legalize ; and that he had sometimes voted for a brother patriot’s pet measure in consideration of a similar service rendered to his own. But Olympia did not concede much respect to political disinterestedness ; she had had a surfeit of that poorly paying virtue in her own cheap and dingy home. Moreover, Ironman had always been so prosperous that he could afford to despise the direct lucre of the lobby, and thus had deserved, in the opinion of a closely sheared, patient public, the repute of being a singularly upright lawgiver.
Nor was this the end of his enchantments ; he possessed talismans of a more personal nature. He was not so plain a man but that, by dint of careful grooming and fine caparisons, he could pass for handsome. True, he was too lean, too hollow in the chest, too narrow in the shoulders, and too knobby in the arms and legs, to inspire the most realistic sculptor with a desire to perpetuate his model in marble, except for the bare emoluments of the job. But, like many tall and longlimbed men, he was graceful when under way, and had a specially good gait in dancing. As for the shiny circle on the top of his blond head, it, at first sight, appeared a decided disadvantage. To conceal it he bowed rarely and at a very obtuse angle, which caused unobservant and unreflecting people to pronounce him haughty, if not discourteous. But, on the other hand, it led him to carry himself with erectness, and thus gave him a port which was generally admitted to be distingué. His long, aquiline, pinkish face had an expression akin to the immortal perplexity of Lord Dundreary, but for that very reason, perhaps, was considered patrician by numerous Washington ladies. On the whole, he was a cavalier whose proffered arm might well thrill an ambitious woman’s heart with pride.
Such was the partially respectable statesman and almost entirely ludicrous man who lifted the Vanes into the highest circles of the society of our capital. As we have said, his favor was a perilous boon to Olympia, considering her breeding and aspirations. Even as a girl, even while living thriftily in staid Slowburgh, she had been eager after pomps and prodigalities. In Washington, she had become still more demoralized, if we may apply that ugly epithet to a longing for finery and admiration, — a longing so common among our “ guardian angels.” The splendors of women whose husbands had got fortunes by engineering schemes through Congress had completely dazzled her imagination and made her mad with envy.
It would seem that special legislation and its attendant snares of bribery were set for the downfall, not only of our Federal heads in Congress, but also of their Eves.
VII.
By good fortune the intimacy between Senator Ironman and Olympia had budded so late in the session that it did not have time to ripen into such bloom as would irresistibly attract the eye of scandal.
John Vane went home quite content with his wife, and she rather more than content with herself. A diversified existence — Delectable Mountains mingled with Vales of Tears — awaited their feet in Slowburg. It was delightful to our member to have his praises sung night and morning by the enamoured troubadours of the party journals, and to receive salaams, which were obviously tokens of respect for his proved uprightness, from men of acknowledged position and character, — men who had not previously deigned to know him, or had blandly kept him at a distance. On the other hand, it was disagreeable to listen to the grumblings of unrewarded wirepullers of low degree, and to feel obliged to pacify them by dint of promises, apologies, and wheedlings, which now for the first time seemed to him demeaning.
As for Olympia, she could at last enjoy a consciousness of peculiar distinction ; for, whereas in Washington she had been only one of many Congresswomen, she was the sole and solitary one extant in Slowburg,— a fact which gave her pre-eminence among her acquaintance. Unfortunately, it could not exalt her to the social zenith of Saltonstall Avenue, where political notoriety had long been considered a disqualification rather than an introduction, owing to its frequent connection with such low “jobbers ” as Mr. James Bummer. Furthermore there was a scant supply in the family locker of money. During Vane’s absence the refrigerator business had not done well; a costly patent in the same had proved unremunerative ; the dividends were pitifully meagre. All the summer was spent in economizing at the maternal boarding-house or at a cheap resort by the seaside. It was impossible to meet the Ironmans at Saratoga, as Olympia confidently agreed todo. You can imagine her general discontent and how frequently her husband suffered therefrom, and what a poorish season they had of it. But the summer and fall wore away at last, and they returned to Washington with a fair sense of satisfaction, though indifferently furnished in pocket.
“We must live mighty close this winter,” said Vane to his wife, hoping she would take it well.
“ Yes, we must keep house,” replied Olympia, with cheerful firmness. “ This lodging and boarding is awfully expensive, and you get nothing for your money, — a horrid table and vile furniture. It is just being swindled.”
“I know it is being swindled,” groaned John, gazing over the edge of the frying-pan into the fire. “ But it is cheaper than housekeeping ; everybody says so. We can’t afford a house, any more than we can afford a pyramid.”
“ Yes, we can,” insisted Olympia. And thereupon she skipped lightly through a calculation of the cost of housekeeping: the rent would be so much, the food not much more, the service about half as much ; the result a clear saving of many dollars a month.
It looked reasonable, when held up in that offhand way ; it seemed as if economy might evolve such a consummation.
“ But how about furniture, carpets, and so on ? ” reflected Vane.
“ Why, take a furnished house, you muddled creature.”
“ Ah ! but that doubles her rent, or comes closer to trebling it.”
But still Olympia stuck to her project of saving ; and at last (oh, the perseverance of wives !) she conquered. A house was taken, at first only for a month, for the rent scared Vane, and he would not sign a longer lease.
“It seems to me that you are just trying to clean me out,” washisrathercoarse response when Mrs. Vane pleaded for tenure by the session. “If we were only married for the season, I could understand it. Can't you remember that when my pocket is drained” (dreaned, he pronounced it) “yours is empty too ?”
“ And it seems to me that you are just trying to make me miserable,” was Olympia’s illogical but telling retort. “ I don't want to be lectured, sir, as if I were in short dresses.”
Nor was she singularly unreasonable. At that very time and perhaps in that very moment many other wives of Congressmen were inciting their husbands to spend more than their salaries. She had got into a lofty position, and she wanted to live conformably to it. That she should thus live seemed so rational to her, that she could not see how her husband could sanely object to it. As for the lack of sufficient income for the purpose, that surely was his lookout, and not hers. I ask triumphantly how many feminine intellects can discover a flaw in this logic ?
Still, John showed no relenting ; he had got his back up, as the tom-cats put it to each other ; he even looked as though he did not care if she were miserable. So Olympia resorted to argument once more,as feeble humanity does when it finds grumbling useless. She recited the cases of half a dozen other members who had nothing but their salaries, yet took houses by the session ; the inference being that her member could do likewise, and would if he were not a curmudgeon.
“ Yes, and every one of them is head over heels in debt, or drawing bribes from every ring in the lobby,” alleged Vane. “ Do you suppose that being ruined in a crowd makes it any finer ? Do you suppose that the drove of porkers who rushed down steep places into the sea found drowning any more comfortable because there were ten thousand of them ? ” “Porkers! I should like to know whom you apply that name to,” retorted, Olympia, reddening with anger. “ I am your wife, sir, and a born lady.”
“ I was speaking of Congressmen,” answered Vane, with a smile, for he had grown tough under pecking. “ Well, I see that there is no use in arguing this matter. I have signed the lease for one month, and I shall not change it.”
So, on this occasion Olympia had to give in, although it almost cost her her life, to use a common exaggeration. But if a wife wants to punish her husband for his tyrannies, there are always ways enough to do it, thank gracious. Mrs. Vane signalized her first week of housekeeping by giving a costly dinner, inviting Senator Ironman thereto, and flirting with him so openly that henceforward John carried a fresh prickle in his hymeneal crown of roses. Other extravagances followed, not all of them indeed meant as castigations, for Olympia had a curious felicity at spending money, and did it literally without thinking. Instead of “saving on the table,” as she had promised to do and really meant to do, she so managed matters as to make the family nourishment a synonyme in Vane’s mind for being eaten out of house and home. Her cook did the marketing; for how could a born lady do it ? And this cook was a Washington colored sister, — a fact which speaks volumes to naturalists acquainted with that primitive development of “help,”—a fact which suggests waste, mousing relations, a hungry host of visitors in the kitchen, and perhaps pilfering. Vane, asserted that, instead of feeding four people, as he had expected to do, he fed nearer fourteen. Mrs. Vane replied, sometimes tearfully and sometimes pettishly, that no mortal could rule “ those creatures,” and that no lady ought to be expected to do it.
Two months, however, had passed away before this state of things became obvious ; the house being taken for a second month because “ it seemed absurd to break up in such a hurry.” Then, all of a sudden, our member found himself unable to pay his honest debts, or at least a portion of them. It was a terrible thing to him ; never before had he been driven to send away a tradesman uncontent; and it took ail his Congressmanhood to keep him from weeping over the novel humiliation. His distress was heightened by a daybreak dialogue which he chanced to overhear between his milkman and his butcher’s driver.
“ Say ! what kind o’ folks is these Vanes, anyway ?” demanded the milkman, who was a Down-Easter settled in the District.
“ Dunno,” responded the driver, who was a colored man, and so cared for nobody and nothing.
“Waal, they've been gittin’ milk from me for abeout nine weeks, an’ don’t seem to allude to no keind o’ peay,” continued the milkman, with a piteous, inquiring accent.
“Specs likely,” admitted the negro, who would have thought strange of anybody offering to pay for anything.
The unmeant satire of these remarks stung Vane like a blister. All day he was saying to himself and of himself: “ Don’t seem to allude to no keind o' peay. Specs likely.” He could not stand it; he must confide his troubles and ask advice ; he must get strength, wisdom, and cheer out of somebody. The person whom he was finally moved to open his bosom to was not a brother legislator, but a person who was much scoffed at in Congress as a poetical enthusiast and apolitical idealist, because he was engaged in a noble plan for renovating a wofully decayed branch of the government. Mr. Frank Cavendish had met Vane in committeerooms, and the two had been somewhat attracted to each other by their common unpopularity, both being reckoned stumbling-blocks to legislation as it is. To Cavendish our member now repaired, saying to himself in a pathetically meek spirit, that, if the man knew how to reform an entire system of official business, he might, perhaps, be able to reform a foolish Congressman.
“ I don’t want a loan,” he explained, after he had stated his case. “ That would n’t get me out of debt ; it would only change the debtor. Besides, it would n’t stop the sinking process. What I want is to learn how to live on my salary, and still keep a decent position before the world. It would n't be a matter of much account if it was my case alone. But there are loads of us members in the same fix, getting deeper and deeper in debt every year, and seeing only one way out of it,— special legislation, you know.”
This last phrase he added with a ready, commonplace wink which was habitual with him, and suggestive of character. It revealed that, while he disapproved of the briberies and corruptions of the lobby, he did not recoil from them with the disgust of a morally refined soul, and saw in them as much that was humorous as hideous.
“ And that is sheer ruin,” interjected Cavendish, with the haste of one who puts out his hand to save a man from falling.
“ Yes, I suppose it is,” responded Vane ; remembering that if he should take bribes and be exposed in it, he would lose his prized and useful title of “ honest.”
“It is moral ruin to Congressmen and financial ruin to the country,” continued Cavendish, wishing to impress his lesson clearly on this evidently doughy nature.
“You’re right,” admitted John, his conscience vitalized and his intellect cleared by the remark. “ If things go on ten years as they are going now, the lobby will be the real legislative power of the land. Well, to come back to my own case, here I am living beyond my salary, and not very blamable for it either. I am not extravagant in my fancies,” he affirmed positively, and, as we know, with truth ; “and my wife don’t want more than other women generally do,” he added, giving Olympia what credit he might, and perhaps more than was her due. “But living here is really dear, — you can’t make it otherwise. I ’ve tried it, and you can’t! I don’t see but one salvation for us. Do you think it would do to make a move to raise our salaries ? ”
“ Why not first make a move to lessen expenses ? ” suggested Cavendish.
“ How ? ” asked Vane, thinking solely of giving up housekeeping and going into very cheap lodgings, and thinking at the same time of the strenuous fight which Olympia would wage against such a plan.
“ Congress is largely to blame for the present enormous cost of living,” continued Cavendish. “ It devised and it still keeps in force the very laws which diminish by one half the purchasing power of the dollar. Congressmen vote to give themselves five thousand dollars a year, and then vote to make that sum equivalent to only twenty-five hundred. Of course you understand this matter,” he added, politely imputing to Vane more political economy than was in him. “But allow me to explain myself, if only to relieve my own feelings. Here you legislative gentlemen refuse to hasten the resumption of specie payments. The consequence is, that you draw your salary in dollars which are worth only about ninety cents apiece. Next, and what is much more important, you keep up a system of taxation which benefits certain producers enormously, at an enormous expense to the collective body of consumers, the great majority of your constituents. Again, and this too is very important, you lay these taxes less on the luxuries of the rich than on the necessaries of the poor. You have made tea and coffee free, they being really luxuries and not needful to existence, although our extravagant working-classes use them abundantly. Meanwhile you tax heavily all materials of labor and all articles of common comfort. There is hardly a substance or a tool which the American uses in his work but pays a heavy duty. His coal and lumber, his food and the salt which cures it, his clothing and so on, all are taxed. The result is that labor must get high wages or starve. The result to you is, that your apparently liberal salaries are insufficient to support a moderate style of living.”
“ O — I see — you are a free-trader,” drawled John Vane, his countenance falling.
“No, I am an advocate of a revenue tariff; of a system of taxation which bears mainly on people in easy circumstances ; of a system like that of England and Belgium. The entire public income of those two countries is paid by luxuries.”
“O, I dare say you are right,” sighed our member ; “ I have n’t looked into it much, — I ain’t on those committees, you know, —but I dare say you are right. However, it can’t be helped.” And he shook his law-giving head sadly. “If we should so much as whisper revenue tariff, all the monopolists, all the vested interests, would be after us. You don’t know, perhaps, how sharp-eyed and prompt and powerful those fellows are. They are always on hand with their cash, and if you don’t want that you do want re-election. They are as greedy, and I don’t know but they are as strong, as the relief bill and subsidy chaps. It’s a mean thing to own up to, but Congress does n’t fight ’em. This country, Mr. Cavendish, this great Republic which brags so of its freedom, is tyrannized over by a few thousand capitalists and jobbers. No, sir, it’s no sort of use ; we can’t have a revenue tariff.”
“Then there is nothing for an honest legislator to do but to live on the tough steaks and cold hominy of cheap boarding-houses,” observed Cavendish.
“ That’s the only ticket,” mumbled Vane ; and the two patriots parted in low spirits.
As Honest John walked homeward, eschewing the minute expense of the street-cars, he swore that he would live like a pauper, and so keep his integrity. But he reckoned without his host, — meaning therebyt the partner of his bosom, who was certainly a host in herself, particularly when it came to crying.
“Go back to boarding ! ” tearfully exclaimed Olympia, who just then had a reception in view. “ Then why did you commence housekeeping ? The idea of giving me a house only to take it away again ! You don’t love me as other men love their wives. You delight in plaguing me.” And so on, and over again, with much sobbing.
In a day or two she actually Impressed Vane with a feeling that, in wishing to “ take her house from her,” he was guilty of a purpose akin to robbery, and, of course, entirely unworthy of a just husband. He had to concede that, from one point of view, Olympia did not demand overmuch ; even to his business-like and arithmetical imagination, five thousand dollars seemed a large income ; even he could not yet believe it insufficient to cover housekeeping. Partly because he was deluded by this ante-tax idea, and partly because he was a compassionate man and loving husband, he deferred the humble and lenten pilgrimage through boarding-house deserts back to solvency, and, of course, went more and more laden with the bondage of debt.
At last, sad to relate, he began to admit to himself, like so many other hardly bested men, that “ something or other must be done,” meaning something which would bring money, no matter how. One evening as he sat alone in his parlor, now staring in dull discontent at the shaky furniture for which he paid such a high rent, now recalling the fact that Olympia was away at a reception with that opulently dazzling Ironman,he once more thought over his wilderness of troubles and tried to devise a way out of them. He was harassed, degraded, and enfeebled by the daily urgency of debt His matrimonial happiness had been half wrecked by the mere Jack of filthy lucre. It he wanted to recover his wife’s respect and affection, he must positively provide her with gracious surroundings, and stop bullying her about expenditures. How could he get money, with honesty, or, alas ! without it ?
While he was puzzling amid the brambles of this wretched question, he was surprised by a visit from his former friend and wirepuller, Darius Dorman. Vane and Dorman had not seen much of each other since the former had denounced the Great Subfluvial Tunnel as little better than a trick for defrauding the government and the public of small investors. The lobbyist had judged that it would not be wise to “ keep at ” Honest John, and had expended his time, breath, and funds on members of a less Catonian type. Meanwhile the bill had prospered as bills do which “ have money in them.” Although Vane had voted against it, the tunnel had obtained a charter from Congress and likewise a loan of forty millions from the United States treasury, the same being only a dollar a head from every inhabitant of this free country, including women, children, negroes, and Indians not taxed. Two or three times as many more millions had come in from financiers who saw fortyper-cent profit in an early purchase, and from a simple public which believed that it could safely follow the lead of the wise men of the capital. Furthermore, the directors and managers of the Great Subfiuvial had contrived what might be called a Sub-Tunnel for their own peculiar emolument, which fulfilled its purpose admirably. This was a most wonderful invention, and deserves our intensest study. It was a corporation inside of the original corporation. Its ostensible object was the construction of the Subfluvial, but its real object was the division of the capital into profits. For instance, it built a mile of tunnel at a cost of, say ten thousand dollars, and then delivered the same to the outside company for say fifty thousand dollars, and then shared the difference of forty thousand dollars among its own stockholders. Of course this was a better bargain for the inside company than for the outside one ; but all chance of quarrelling between the two was evaded by a very effective device; they had the same men for directors, or the same men’s partners. O, it was a beautiful business idea, — this Floating Credit, or Syndicate, or whatever its inventors christened it. It reminds one of that ingenious machine called the Hen Persuader, which was so constructed that, when placed under a hen’s nest, it would withdraw every egg the moment it was laid, whereupon biddy would infer that her sensations had deceived her with regard to the fact of laying, and would immediately deposit another egg, and so continue to do until she died of exhaustion. In some respects, also, this internal corporation resembled that hungry creature known as a tapeworm, which devours a man’s dinner as fast as he swallows it, and leaves him hungrier than ever.
Of course the gentlemen who held shares in the Hen Persuader did a profitable business, and filled their private wallets with golden eggs in abundance. But still they were not quite content ; the old fowl above them, that is to say, Uncle Sam’s eagle, occasionally cackled angrily; and it was extremely desirable to put a stop to his alarming demand for chickens. Darius Dorman had an anxious look on his crisped and smutted physiognomy as he seated himself opposite his representative.
“ Vane, we must have another lift, or let the thing drop,” he said abruptly.
“ What! have n’t you bled the treasury enough ?” grumbled Honest John, angrily contrasting his own shrunken porte monnaie with the plethoric pocket-books and overrunning safes of the great corporation.
“We want time,” answered Dorman, really meaning thereby that he wanted an eternity of it. “Here is this Secretary of the Treasury making a raid on us. He asks for interest on his loan. How in the name of all the witches of Salem does he suppose the Subfluvial can pay three millions of interest per year, in addition to meeting its running expenses ? We understood that the interest was to wait until the termination of the loan, thirty years from now.”
“ Pay it out of the principal,” suggested Vane sulkily. “ Do as other roads do.”
“ But we want the principal for dividends. We can’t keep on selling stock, unless we show a dividend now and then.”
“Ain’t there any profits?” asked Vane, with a keen look. “ Have n’t your managers and inside passengers laid away enough to spare a little for profits ? ”
Dorman had such a spasm that he fairly writhed in his chair. It seemed as if every swindling dollar that he had got out of the Hen Persuader were that moment burning into his already cicatrized cuticle.
“ O, they will fall in later,” he smiled, recovering his self possession. “ They will come when the tunnel is clean through, and has had time to make travel. But until that time arrives we must have favor shown us. Give us a lift, John, and we ’ll give you one.”
Honest John Vane hesitated, querying whether he should take one solitary step to meet temptation, and see at least what it was like.
“ Well,” he at last said, in the surly tone of a man who feels that he is on the verge of making a diabolically bad bargain, — “ well, what do you want now ? ”
J. W. DeForest.