Booth Tarkington

by Booth Tarkington

  The opportunity to show his fellows that new greatness was among them delayed not over-long, and Senator Rawson arose, long and bony in his best clothes, to address the senate with a huge voice in denunciation of the “Sunday Baseball Bill,” then upon second reading. The classical references, which, as a born orator, he felt it necessary to introduce, were received with acclamations which the gavel of the Lieutenant-Governor had no power to still.

  “What led to the De-cline and Fall of the Roman Empire?” he exclaimed. “I await an answer from the advocates of this de-generate measure! I demand an answer from them! Let me hear from them on that subject! Why don’t they speak up? They can’t give one. Not because they ain’t familiar with history, no sir! That’s not the reason! It’s because they daren’t, because their answer would have to go on record against ’em! Don’t any of you try to raise it against me that I ain’t speakin’ to the point, for I tell you that when you encourage Sunday Baseball, or any kind of Sabbath-breakin’ on Sunday, you’re tryin’ to start this State on the downward path that beset Rome! I’ll tell you what ruined it. The Roman Empire started out to be the greatest nation on earth, and they had a good start, too, just like the United States has got to-day. Then what happened to ’em? Why, them old ancient fellers got more interested in athletic games and gladiatorial combats and racing and all kinds of out-door sports, and bettin’ on ’em, than they were in oratory, or literature, or charitable institutions and good works of all kinds. At first they were moderate and the country was prosperous. But six days in the week wouldn’t content ’em, and they went at it all the time, so that at last they gave up the seventh day to their sports, the way this bill wants us to do, and from that time on the result was de-generacy and de-gredation! You better remember that lesson, my friends, and don’t try to sink this State to the level of Rome!”

  When Alonzo Rawson wiped his dampened brow, and dropped into his chair, he was satisfied to the core of his heart with the effect of his maiden effort. There was not one eye in the place that was not fixed upon him and shining with surprise and delight, while the kindly Lieutenant-Governor, his face very red, rapped for order. The young senator across the aisle leaned over and shook Alonzo’s hand excitedly.

  “That was beautiful, Senator Rawson!” he whispered. “I’m for the bill, but I can respect a masterly opponent.”

  “I thank you, Senator Truslow,” Alonzo returned graciously. “I am glad to have your good opinion, Senator.”

  “You have it, Senator,” said Truslow enthusiastically. “I hope you intend to speak often?”

  “I do, Senator. I intend to make myself heard,” the other answered gravely, “upon all questions of moment.”

  “You will fill a great place among us, Senator!”

  Then Alonzo Rawson wondered if he had not under­estimated his neighbour across the aisle; he had formed an opinion of Truslow as one of small account and no power, for he had observed that, although this was Truslow’s second term, he had not once demanded recognition nor attempted to take part in a debate. Instead, he seemed to spend most of his time frittering over some desk work, though now and then he walked up and down the aisles talking in a low voice to various senators. How such a man could have been elected at all, Alonzo failed to understand. Also, Truslow was physically inconsequent, in his colleague’s estimation—“a little insignificant, dudish kind of a man,” he had thought; one whom he would have darkly suspected of cigarettes had he not been dumbfounded to behold Truslow smoking an old black pipe in the lobby. The Senator from Stackpole had looked over the other’s clothes with a disapproval that amounted to bitterness. Truslow’s attire reminded him of pictures in New York magazines, or the dress of boys newly home from college, he didn’t know which, but he did know that it was contemptible. Consequently, after receiving the young man’s congratulations, Alonzo was conscious of the keenest surprise at his own feeling that there might be something in him after all.

  He decided to look him over again, more carefully to take the measure of one who had shown himself so frankly an admirer. Waiting, therefore, a few moments until he felt sure that Truslow’s gaze had ceased to rest upon himself, he turned to bend a surreptitious but piercing scrutiny upon his neighbour. His glance, however, sweeping across Truslow’s shoulder toward the face, suddenly encountered another pair of eyes beyond, so intently fixed upon himself that he started. The clash was like two search-lights meeting—and the glorious brown eyes that shot into Alonzo’s were not the eyes of Truslow.

  Truslow’s desk was upon the outer aisle, and along the wall were placed comfortable leather chairs and settees, originally intended for the use of members of the upper house, but nearly always occupied by their wives and daughters, or “lady-lobbyists,” or other women spectators. Leaning back with extraordinary grace, in the chair nearest Truslow, sat the handsomest woman Alonzo had ever seen in his life. Her long coat of soft grey fur was unrecognizable to him in connection with any familiar breed of squirrel; her broad flat hat of the same fur was wound with a grey veil, underneath which her heavy brown hair seemed to exhale a mysterious glow, and never, not even in a lithograph, had he seen features so regular or a skin so clear! And to look into her eyes seemed to Alonzo like diving deep into clear water and turning to stare up at the light.

  His own eyes fell first. In the breathless awkwardness that beset him they seemed to stumble shamefully down to his desk, like a country-boy getting back to his seat after a thrashing on the teacher’s platform. For the lady’s gaze, profoundly liquid as it was, had not been friendly.

  Alonzo Rawson had neither the habit of petty analysis, nor the inclination toward it; yet there arose within him a wonder at his own emotion, at its strangeness and the violent reaction of it. A moment ago his soul had been steeped in satisfaction over the figure he had cut with his speech and the extreme enthusiasm which had been accorded it—an extraordinarily pleasant feeling: suddenly this was gone, and in its place he found himself almost choking with a dazed sense of having been scathed, and at the same time understood in a way in which he did not understand himself. And yet—he and this most unusual lady had been so mutually conscious of each other in their mysterious interchange that he felt almost acquainted with her. Why, then, should his head be hot with resentment? Nobody had said anything to him!

  He seized upon the fattest of the expensive books supplied to him by the State, opened it with emphasis and began not to read it, with abysmal abstraction, tinglingly alert to the circumstance that Truslow was holding a low-toned but lively conversation with the unknown. Her laugh came to him, at once musical, quiet, and of a quality which irritated him into saying bitterly to himself that he guessed there was just as much refinement in Stackpole as there was in the Capital City, and just as many old families! The clerk calling his vote upon the “Baseball Bill” at that moment, he roared “No!” in a tone which was profane. It seemed to him that he was avenging himself upon somebody for something and it gave him a great deal of satisfaction.

  He returned immediately to his imitation of Archimedes, only relaxing the intensity of his attention to the text (which blurred into jargon before his fixed gaze) when he heard that light laugh again. He pursed his lips, looked up at the ceiling as if slightly puzzled by some profound question beyond the reach of womankind; solved it almost immediately, and, setting his hand to pen and paper, wrote the capital letter “O” several hundred times on note-paper furnished by the State. So oblivious was he, apparently, to everything but the question of statecraft which occupied him, that he did not even look up when the morning’s session was adjourned and the lawmakers began to pass noisily out, until Truslow stretched an arm across the aisle and touched him upon the shoulder.

  “In a moment, Senator!” answered Alonzo in his deepest chest tones. He made it a very short moment, indeed, for he had a wild, breath-taking suspicion of what was coming.

  “I want you to meet Mrs. Protheroe, Senator,” said Tru
slow, rising, as Rawson, after folding his writings with infinite care, placed them in his breast pocket.

  “I am pleased to make your acquaintance, ma’am,” Alonzo said in a loud, firm voice, as he got to his feet, though the place grew vague about him when the lady stretched a charming, slender, gloved hand to him across Truslow’s desk. He gave it several solemn shakes.

  “We shouldn’t have disturbed you, perhaps?” she asked, smiling radiantly upon him. “You were at some important work, I’m afraid.”

  He met her eyes again, and their beauty and the thoughtful kindliness of them fairly took his breath. “I am the chairman, ma’am,” he replied, swallowing, “of the committee on drains and dikes.”

  “I knew it was something of great moment,” she said gravely, “but I was anxious to tell you that I was interested in your speech.”

  A few minutes later, without knowing how he had got his hat and coat from the cloak-room, Alonzo Rawson found himself walking slowly through the marble vistas of the State-house to the great outer doors with the lady and Truslow. They were talking inconsequently of the weather, and of various legislators, but Alonzo did not know it. He vaguely formed replies to her questions and he hardly realized what the questions were; he was too stirringly conscious of the rich quiet of her voice and of the caress of the grey fur of her cloak when the back of his hand touched it—rather accidentally—now and then, as they moved on together.

  It was a cold, quick air to which they emerged and Alonzo, daring to look at her, found that she had pulled the veil down over her face, the colour of which, in the keen wind, was like that of June roses seen through morning mists. At the curb a long, low, rakish black automobile was in waiting, the driver a mere indistinguishable cylinder of fur.

  Truslow, opening the little door of the tonneau, offered his hand to the lady. “Come over to the club, Senator, and lunch with me,” he said. “Mrs. Protheroe won’t mind dropping us there on her way.”

  That was an eerie ride for Alonzo, whose feet were falling upon strange places. His pulses jumped and his eyes swam with the tears of unlawful speed, but his big ungloved hand tingled not with the cold so much as with the touch of that divine grey fur upon his little finger.

  “You intend to make many speeches, Mr. Truslow tells me,” he heard the rich voice saying.

  “Yes ma’am,” he summoned himself to answer. “I expect I will. Yes ma’am.” He paused, and then repeated, “Yes ma’am.”

  She looked at him for a moment. “But you will do some work, too, won’t you?” she asked slowly.

  Her intention in this passed by Alonzo at the time. “Yes ma’am,” he answered. “The committee work interests me greatly, especially drains and dikes.”

  “I have heard,” she said, as if searching his opinion, “that almost as much is accomplished in the committee-rooms as on the floor? There—and in the lobby and in the hotels and clubs?”

  “I don’t have much to do with that!” he returned quickly. “I guess none of them lobbyists will get much out of me! I even sent back all their railroad tickets. They needn’t come near me!”

  After a pause which she may have filled with unexpressed admiration, she ventured, almost timidly: “Do you remember that it was said that Napoleon once attributed the secret of his power over other men to one quality?”

  “I am an admirer of Napoleon,” returned the Senator from Stackpole. “I admire all great men.”

  “He said that he held men by his reserve.”

  “It can be done,” observed Alonzo, and stopped, feeling that it was more reserved to add nothing to the sentence.

  “But I suppose that such a policy,” she smiled upon him inquiringly, “wouldn’t have helped him much with women?”

  “No,” he agreed immediately. “My opinion is that a man ought to tell a good woman everything. What is more sacred than—”

  The car, turning a corner much too quickly, performed a gymnastic squirm about an unexpected street-car and the speech ended in a gasp, as Alonzo, not of his own volition, half rose and pressed his cheek closely against hers. Instantaneous as it was, his heart leaped violently, but not with fear. Could all the things of his life that had seemed beautiful have been compressed into one instant, it would not have brought him even the suggestion of the wild shock of joy of that one, wherein he knew the glamorous perfume of Mrs. Protheroe’s brown hair and felt her cold cheek firm against his, with only the grey veil between.

  “I’m afraid this driver of mine will kill me some day,” she said, laughing and composedly straightening her hat. “Do you care for big machines?”

  “Yes ma’am,” he answered huskily. “I haven’t been in many.”

  “Then I’ll take you again,” said Mrs. Protheroe. “If you like I’ll come down to the State-house and take you out for a run in the country.”

  “When?” said the lost young man, staring at her with his mouth open. “When?”

  “Saturday afternoon if you like. I’ll be there at two.”

  They were in front of the club and Truslow had already jumped out. Mrs. Protheroe gave him her hand and they exchanged a glance significant of something more than a friendly good-bye. Indeed, one might have hazarded that there was something almost businesslike about it. The confused Senator from Stackpole, climbing out reluctantly, observed it not, nor could he have understood even if he had seen, that delicate signal which passed between his two companions.

  When he was upon the ground Mrs. Protheroe extended her hand without speaking, but her lips formed the word, “Saturday.” Then she was carried away quickly, while Alonzo, his heart hammering, stood looking after her, born into a strange world, the touch of the grey fur upon his little finger, the odour of her hair faintly about him, one side of his face red, the other pale.

  “To-day is Wednesday,” he said, half aloud.

  “Come on, Senator.” Truslow took his arm and turned him toward the club doors.

  The other looked upon his new friend vaguely. “Why, I forgot to thank her for the ride,” he said.

  “You’ll have other chances, Senator,” Truslow assured him. “Mrs. Protheroe has a hobby for studying politics and she expects to come down often. She has plenty of time—she’s a widow, you know.”

  “I hope you didn’t think,” exclaimed Alonzo indignantly, “that I thought she was a married woman!”

  After lunch they walked back to the State-house together, Truslow regarding his thoughtful companion with sidelong whimsicalness. Mrs. Protheroe’s question, suggestive of a difference between work and speechmaking, had recurred to Alonzo, and he had determined to make himself felt, off the floor as well as upon it. He set to this with a fine energy, that afternoon, in his committee-room, and the Senator from Stackpole knew his subject. On drains and dikes he had no equal. He spoke convincingly to his colleagues of the committee upon every bill that was before them, and he compelled their humblest respect. He went earnestly at it, indeed, and sat very late that night, in his room at a nearby boarding house, studying bills, trying to keep his mind upon them and not to think of his strange morning and of Saturday. Finally his neighbour in the next room, Senator Ezra Trumbull, long abed, was awakened by his praying and groaned slightly. Trumbull meant to speak to Rawson about his prayers, for Trumbull was an early one to bed and they woke him every night. The partition was flimsy and Alonzo addressed his Maker in the loud voice of those accustomed to talking across wide out-of-door spaces. Trumbull considered it especially unnecessary in the city; though, as a citizen of a county which loved but little his neighbour’s district, he felt that in Stackpole there was good reason for a person to shout his prayers at the top of his voice and even then have small chance to carry through the distance. Still, it was a delicate matter to mention and he put it off from day to day.

  Thursday passed slowly for Alonzo Rawson, nor was his voice lifted in debate. There was little but routine; and the m
ain interest of the chamber was in the lobbying that was being done upon the “Sunday Baseball Bill” which had passed to its third reading and would come up for final disposition within a fortnight. This was the measure which Alonzo had set his heart upon defeating. It was a simple enough bill: it provided, in substance, that baseball might be played on Sunday by professionals in the State capital, which was proud of its league team. Naturally, it was denounced by clergymen, and deputations of ministers and committees from women’s religious societies were constantly arriving at the State-house to protest against its passage. The Senator from Stackpole reassured all of these with whom he talked, and was one of their staunchest allies and supporters. He was active in leading the wavering among his colleagues, or even the inimical, out to meet and face the deputations. It was in this occupation that he was engaged, on Friday afternoon, when he received a shock.

  A committee of women from a church society was waiting in the corridor, and he had rounded-up a reluctant half-dozen senators and led them forth to be interrogated as to their intentions regarding the bill. The committee and the lawmakers soon distributed themselves into little argumentative clumps, and Alonzo found himself in the centre of these, with one of the ladies who had unfortunately—but, in her enthusiasm, without misgivings—begun a reproachful appeal to an advocate of the bill whose name was Goldstein.

  “Senator Goldstein,” she exclaimed, “I could not believe it when I heard that you were in favour of this measure! I have heard my husband speak in the highest terms of your old father. May I ask you what he thinks of it? If you voted for the desecration of Sunday by a low baseball game, could you dare go home and face that good old man?”