# Dark Princess/Part 3

PART III
THE CHICAGO POLITICIAN
PART III
THE CHICAGO POLITICIAN
1924, January, to April, 1926
Winter. Winter, jail and death. Winter, three winters long, with only the green of two little springs and the crimson of two short autumns; but ever with hard, cold winter in triumph over all. Cold streets and hard faces; white death in a white world; but underneath the ice, fire from heaven, burning back to life the poor and black and guilty, the hopeless and unbelieving, the suave and terrible. Dirt and frost, slush and diamonds, amid the roar of winter in Chicago.
I
Sara Andrews listened to the short trial and sentence of Matthew Towns in Chicago in early January, 1924, with narrowed eyelids, clicking her stenographer’s pencil against her teeth. She was not satisfied. She had followed the Klan meeting with professional interest, then the porters’ strike and Matthew’s peculiar case. There was, she was certain, more here than lay on the surface, and she walked back to Sammy Scott’s office in a brown study.
Sara Andrews was thin, small, well tailored. Only at second glance would you notice that she was “colored.” She was not beautiful, but she gave an impression of cleanliness, order, cold, clean hardness, and unusual efficiency. She wore a black crépe dress, with crisp white organdie collar and cuffs, chiffon hose, and short-trimmed hair. Altogether she was pleasing but a trifle disconcerting to look at. Men always turned to gaze at her, but they did not attempt to flirt—at least not more than once.
Miss Andrews was self-made and independent. She had been born in Indiana of the union of a colored chambermaid in the local hotel and a white German cook. The two had been duly married and duly divorced after the cook went on a visit to Germany and never returned. Then her mother died, and this ​girl fought her way through school; she forced herself into the local business college, and she fought off men with a fierceness and determination that scared them. It became thoroughly understood in Richmond that you couldn’t “fool” with Sara Andrews. Local Lotharios gave up trying. Only fresh strangers essayed, and they received direct and final information. She slapped one drummer publicly in the Post Office and nearly upset evening prayer at St. Luke’s, to the discomfiture of a pious deacon who sat beside her and was praying with his hands.
For a long time she was the only “colored” person in town, except a few laborers; and although almost without social life or intimate friends, she became stenographer at the dry goods “Emporium” at a salary which was regarded as fabulous for a young woman. Then Southern Negroes began to filter in as laborers, and the color line appeared, broad and clear, in the town. Sara Andrews could have ignored it and walked across so far as soda fountains and movie theaters were concerned, but she wouldn’t. A local druggist wanted to marry her and “go away.” She refused and suddenly gave up her job and went to Chicago. There, in 1922, she became secretary to the Honorable Sammy Scott.
The Honorable Sammy was a leading colored politician of Chicago. He was a big, handsome, brown man, with smooth black hair, broad shoulders, and a curved belly. He had the most infectious smile and the most cordial handshake in the city and the reputation of never forgetting a face. Behind all this was a keen intelligence, infinite patience, and a beautiful sense of humor. Sammy was a coming man, and he knew it.
He was, in popular parlance, a “politician.” In reality he was a super-business man. In the Second Ward with its overflowing Negro population, Sammy began business in 1910 by selling the right to gamble, keep houses of prostitution, and commit petty theft, to certain men, white and black, who paid him in cash. With this cash he bribed the city officials and police to let these people alone and he paid a little army of henchmen to organize the Negro voters and see that they voted for officials who could be bribed.
Sammy did not invent this system—he found it in full blast and he improved it. He replaced white ward heelers with blacks who were more acceptable to the colored voters and were them​selves raised from the shadow of crime to well-paid jobs; some even became policemen and treated Negro prisoners with a certain consideration. Some became clerks and civil servants of various sorts.
Then came migration, war, more migration, prohibition, and the Riot. Black Chicago was in continual turmoil, and the black vote more than doubled. Sammy’s business expanded enormously; bootlegging became a prime source of graft and there was more gambling, more women for sale, and more crime. Men pushed and jostled each other in their eagerness to pay for the privilege of catering to these appetites. Sammy became Alderman from the Second Ward and committeeman, representing the regular Second Ward Republican organization on the County Central Committee. He made careful alliance with the colored Alderman in the Third Ward and the white Aldermen from the other colored wards. He envisaged a political machine to run all black Chicago.
But there were difficulties—enormous difficulties. Other Negro politicians in his own and other wards, not to mention the swarm of white bosses, had the same vision and ambition as Sammy—they must all be reconciled and brought into one organization. As it was now, Negroes competed with each other and fought each other, and the white party bosses, setting one against the other, got the advantage. It was at this stage of the game that Sara Andrews joined Sammy’s staff.
When Sara Andrews applied to the Honorable Sammy for work, he hired her on the spot because she looked unusually ornamental in her immaculate crépe dress, white silk hose, and short-trimmed hair. She had intelligent, straight gray eyes, too, and Sammy liked both intelligence and gray eyes. Moreover, she could “pass” for white—a decided advantage on errands and interviews
Sammy’s office was on State Street at the corner of Thirty-second. Most of the buildings around there were old frame structures with living-quarters above and stores below. On each corner were brick buildings planned like the others, but now used wholly for stores and offices. The entrance to Sammy’s building was on the Thirty-second Street side; a dingy gray wooden door opened into a narrow hall of about three by four feet. Thence rose a flight of stairs which startled by its amazing steepness as well as its darkness. At the top of the ​stairs, the hall was dim and narrow, with high ceilings, At the end was a waiting-room facing State Street. It was finished with a linoleum rug that did not completely cover the soft wood floor; its splinters insisted on pulling away as if to avoid the covering of dark red paint. There were two desks in the waiting room, some chairs, and a board upon which were listed “Apartments for rent.” Sash curtains of dingy white, held up with rods, were at the windows, and above them in gold letters were painted the names of various persons and of “Samuel Scott, Attorney at Law.”
A railing about three feet high made an inner sanctum, and beyond was a closed door marked “Private.” Back here in Sammy’s private office lay the real center of things, and in front of this and within the rail, Sammy installed Sara. The second day she was there, Sammy kissed her. That was four years ago, and Sammy had not kissed her since. He had not even tried. Just what happened Sammy never said; he only grinned, and all his friends ever really knew was that Sammy and Sara were closeted together for a full half-hour after the kiss and that Sara did most of the talking. But Sara stayed at her job, and she stayed because Sammy discovered that she was a new asset in his business; first of all, that she was a real stenographer. He did not have to dictate letters, which had always been a difficult task. He just talked with Sara and signed what she brought him a few minutes later.
“And believe me,” said Sammy, “she writes some letter!”
Indeed Sara brought new impetus and methods into Sammy’s business. When that kiss failed, Sammy was afraid he had got hold of a mere prude and was resolved to shift her as soon as possible. Then came her letter-writing and finally her advice. She listened beautifully, and Sammy loved to talk. She drew out his soul, and gradually he gave her full confidence. He discovered to his delight that Sara Andrews had no particular scruples or conscience. Lying, stealing, bribery, gambling, prostitution, were facts that she accepted casually. Personally honest and physically “pure” almost to prudery, she could put a lie through the typewriter in so adroit a way that it sounded better than the truth and was legally fireproof. She recognized politics as a means of private income, and her shrewd advice not only increased the office revenue, but ​slowly changed it to safer and surer forms. “Colored cabarets are all right,” said Sara, “but white railroads pay better.”
She pointed out that not only would the World-at-Play pay for privilege and protection, but the World-at-Work would pay even more. Retail merchants, public service corporations, financial exploiters, all wanted either to break the law or to secure more pliable laws; and with post-war inflation, they would set no limit of largesse for the persons who could deliver the goods. Sammy must therefore get in touch with these Agencies in the White World. Sammy was skeptical. He still placed his chief reliance on drunkards, gamblers, and prostitutes. “Moreover,” he said, “all that calls not only for more aldermen but more members of the legislature and Negroes on the bench.”
“Sure,” answered Sara, “and we got to push for Negro aldermen in the Sixth and Seventh Wards, a couple of more members of the legislature, a judge, and a congressman.”
“And each one of them will set up as an independent boss, and what can I do with them?”
“Defeat ’em at next election,” said Sara, “and that means that you’ve got to get a better hold on the Negro vote than you’ve got. Oh, I know you’re mighty popular in the policy shops, but you’re not so much in the churches. You're corralling the political jobs and ward organizations, but you must get to be popular—get the imagination of the rank and file.”
Sammy hooted the suggestion, and Sara said nothing more for a while. But she had set Sammy thinking. She always did that.
In fine, Sara Andrews became indispensable to the Honorable Sammy Scott, and he knew that she was. He would have liked to kiss and cuddle her now and then when they sat closeted together in the den which she had transformed into an impressive, comfortable, and singularly official office. She was always so cool and clean with her slim white hands and perfect clothes. But all she ever allowed was a little pat on the shoulder and an increase in salary. Now and then she accepted jewelry and indicated clearly just what she wanted.
Then for a while Sammy half made up his mind to marry her, and he was about sure she would accept. But he was a little afraid. She was too cold and hard. He had no mind to embrace a cake of ice even if it was well groomed and sleek.
“No,” said Sammy to himself and to his friends and even ​to Sara in his expansive moments, after a good cocktail, “no, I’m not a marrying man.”
Sara was neither a prude nor a flirt. She simply had a good intellect without moral scruples and a clear idea of the communal and social value of virginity, respectability, and good clothes. She saved her money carefully and soon had a respectable bank account and some excellent bonds.
Sammy was born in Mississippi the year that Hayes was elected. He had little education but could talk good English and made a rattling public speech. With Sara’s coaching he even attempted something more than ordinary political hokum and on one or two public occasions lately had been commended; even the Tribune called him a man of “real information in current events.” Sara accordingly bought magazines and read papers carefully. She wrote out his more elaborate speeches; he committed them to his remarkable memory in an hour or so.
Why then should Sammy marry Sara? He had her brains and skill, and nobody could outbid him in salary. Of that he was sure. Why spoil the loyalty of a first-class secretary for the doubtful love of a wife? Then, too, he rather liked the hovering game. He came to his office and his letters with a zest. He discovered the use of letters even in politics. Before Sara’s day there was a typewriting machine in Sammy’s office, but it was seldom used. Previous clerks had been poor stenographers, and Sammy could not dictate. Besides, why write? Sara showed him why. He touched her finger tips; he brought her flowers and told her all his political secrets. She had no lovers and no prospective lovers. Time enough to marry her if he found he must. Meantime love was cheap in Chicago and secretaries scarce, and, in fine, “I’m not a marrying man,” repeated the Honorable Sammy.
Sara smiled coolly and continued:
“I think I see something for us in the Towns case.”
Sammy frowned. “Better not touch it,” he said. “Bolsheviks are unpopular, especially with railroads. And when it comes to niggers blowing up white folks—well, my advice is, drop it!”
So the matter dropped for a week. Then Sara quietly returned to it: “Listen, Sammy”—Sara was quite informal when they were alone in the sanctum—“I think I see a scoop.” Sammy listened. “This Matthew Towns—”
​“What Matthew Towns?”
“The man they sent to Joliet.”
“Oh! I thought you’d dropped that.”
“No, I’ve just really begun to take it up. This Towns is unusual, intelligent, educated, plucky.”
“How do you know?”
“I saw him during the trial, and since then I’ve been down to Joliet.”
“Humph!” said Sammy, lighting his third cigar.
“He is a man that would never forget a service. With such a man added to your machine you might land in Congress.”
Sammy laid his cigar down and sat up.
“I keep telling you, Sammy, you’ve got to be something more than the ordinary colored Chicago politician before you can take the next step. You’ve got to be popular among respectable people.”
“Respectable, hell!” remarked Sammy.
“Precisely,” said Sara; “the hell of machine politics has got to be made to look respectable for ordinary consumption. Now you need something to jack you up in popular opinion. Something that will at once appeal to Negro race pride and not scare off the white folks who want to do political business with you. Our weakness as Negro politicians is that we have never been able to get the church people and the young educated men of ability into our game.”
“Hypocrites and asses!”
“Quite so, but you’ll notice these hypocrites, asses, good lawyers, fine engineers, and pious ministers are all grist to the white man’s political machine. He puts forward and sticks into office educated and honest men of ability who can do things, and he only asks that they won’t be too damned good and honest to support his main interests in a crisis. Moreover, either we'll get the pious crowd and the educated youngsters in the machine, or some fine day they’ll smash it.
“Sammy, have some imagination! Your methods appeal to the same crowd in the same old way. Meantime new crowds are pushing in and old crowds are changing and they want new ways—they are caught by new gags; makes no difference whether they are better or worse than the old—facts are facts, and the fact is that your political methods are not appealing to or holding the younger crowd. Now here’s bait for them, ​and big bait too. If I am not much mistaken, Towns is a find. For instance: ‘The Honorable Sammy Scott secures the release of Towns. Towns, a self-sacrificing hero, now looms as a race martyr. Towns says that he owes all to the Honorable Sammy!’”
“Fine,” mocked Sammy, “and niggers wild! But how about the white folks? ‘Sam Scott, the black politician, makes a jail delivery of the criminal who tried to wreck the Louisville & Nashville Railway Special. A political shame,’ etc., etc.”
“Hold up,” insisted Sara. “Now see here: the Negroes have been thoroughly aroused and are bitterly resentful at the Klan meeting, the lynching of the porter, and Matthew Towns’ incarceration. His release would be a big political asset to the man who pulled it off. And if you are the man and the white political and business world know that your new popularity strengthens your machine and delivers them votes when wanted, and that instead of dealing with a dozen would-be bosses, they can just see you—why, Sammy, you’d own black Chicago!”
“Sounds pretty—but—”
“On the other hand, who would object? I have been talking to the porters and railroad men and to others. They say the judge was reluctant to sentence Towns, but saw no legal escape. The railroad and the Pullman Company owe him millions and were willing to reward him handsomely if he had escaped the law. The Klan owes several hundred lives to him. None of these will actively oppose a pardon. It remains only to get one of them actually to ask for it.”
“Well—one, which one?” grinned Sammy, touching Sara’s fingers as he reached for another cigar.
“The Klan.”
“Are you crazy!”
“I think not. Consider; the Klan is at once criminal and victim. Its recent activities have been too open and bombastic. It has suffered political reverses both north and south. It is accused of mere ‘nigger-baiting.’ Would it not be a grand wide gesture of tolerance for the Klan to ask freedom for Towns? Something like donations to Negro churches, only bigger and with more advertising value.”
“Well, sure; if they had that kind of sense.”
“They’ve got all kinds of sense. Now again, there is some​thing funny about that lynching. I’ve heard a lot of talk. Towns has let out bits of a strange story, and the porters say he was wild and bitter about the lynching. Suppose, now I’m only guessing—Towns knows more than he has told about this woman and her carrying on. If so, she might be glad to help him. A favor for keeping his mouth shut. I mention this, because she has married since the Klan convention and her husband is a high official of the Klan.”
Sammy still didn’t see much in the scheme, but he had a great respect for Sara’s shrewdness.
“Well what do you propose?” he asked.
“I propose to go to Joliet again and have a long talk with Towns. Then I’m going to drop down to Washington. I’ve always wanted to go there. I’ll need a letter of introduction from somebody of importance in Chicago to this woman, Mrs. Therwald.”
II
It was a lovely February day as Sara walked down Sixteenth Street, Washington—clear, cool, with silvery sunshine. Sara was appropriately garbed in a squirrel coat and hat, pearl-gray hose, and gray suède slippers. Her gloves matched her eyes, and her manner was sedate. She walked down to Pennsylvania Avenue, looked at the White House casually, and then sauntered on to the New Willard. Her color was so imperceptible that she walked in unhindered and strolled through the lobby. Mrs. Therwald was not in, she was informed by the room clerk. She talked with a bell-boy, and when Mrs.Therwald entered, observed her from afar, carefully and at her leisure. She was a big florid woman, boldly handsome, but beginning to show age. About a quarter of an hour after she had taken the elevator, Sara sent up her card and letter of introduction from the wife of a prominent white Chicago politician.
Mrs. Therwald received her. She was a woman thoroughly bored with life, and Sara looked like a pleasant interlude. They were soon chatting easily. Sara intimated that she wrote for magazines and newspapers and that she had come to see the wife of a celebrity.
“Oh, no—we’re nothing.”
​“Oh, yes—the Klan is a power and bound to grow—if it acts wisely.”
“I really don’t know much about it. My husband is the one interested.”
“I know—and that brings me to the second object of my visit-Matthew Towns.”
Mrs. Therwald was silent several seconds—and then: “Matthew Towns? Who—”
“Of course you would not remember,” said Sara hastily, for she had noticed that pause, and the tone of the question did not carry conviction. “I mean the porter who was sent to the penitentiary for the attempted wreck of the Klan Special.”
“Oh, that—scoundrel.”
“Ves, There is, as perhaps you know, a great deal of talk about his silence. He must know—lots of things. I think it rather fine in him to shield—others. I hope he won’t break down in jail and talk.”
Mrs. Therwald started perceptibly.
“Talk about what?” she asked almost sharply.
Sara was quite satisfied and continued easily.
“Well, about the black conspirators against the Ku Klux Klan—or the white ones, because they are more likely to be white. Or he might gossip and just stir up trouble. But I think he’s too big for all that. You know, I saw him and talked to him—really handsome, for a colored man. Oh, by the by—but of course not. I was going to ask if by any possibility you had seen him on the train.”
“I—I really don’t know.”
“Of course you wouldn’t remember definitely. But to come to the point of my visit: certain highly placed persons are convinced from new evidence, which cannot be published, that Towns is a victim and not a criminal. They are therefore seeking to have Towns pardoned, and I thought how fine it would be if you could induce your husband and some other high officials of the Klan to sign the petition. How grateful he would be! I think it would be the biggest and fairest gesture the Klan ever made, and frankly, many people are saying so. In that case, if he is a conspirator, he could be watched and traced and his helpers found. And then, too, think of his gratitude to you!”
Sara left the petition with Mrs. Therwald, and they talked ​on pleasantly and casually for another half-hour. Miss Andrews “would stay to tea”? “But no—so sorry.” Sara said that she had stayed already much longer than she had planned, and hoped she had not bored Mrs. Therwald with her gossip. In truth she did not want to let the lady eat with one who, she might later discover, was a “nigger.” They parted most cordially.
Mrs.Therwald happened a week later to say casually to her husband:
“That Towns nigger that they sent to jail—don’t you think he’d be safer outside than in? He seemed a decent sort of chap on the trip. I was thinking it might be a shrewd gesture for the Klan to help free him.”
Her husband looked at her hard and said nothing. But he did some thinking. That very day the white Democrats of Chicago had complained to the Klan that their small but formerly growing Negro vote was disappearing because of the Klan meeting and the Towns incident. Illinois with its growing Negro vote would be no longer a doubtful state politically unless something was done. How would it do to free Towns?
III
Miss Sara Andrews sat in the anteroom of the office of the Grand Dragon of the Ku Klux Klan in Washington. Several persons looked at her curiously.
“I believe she’s a nigger,” said a stenographer.
“Italian or Spanish, I would say,” replied the chief clerk and frowned, for Sara had decided to wait. She said that she must really see Mr. Green personally and privately. After an hour’s wait, she saw him. Mr. Green turned toward her a little impatiently, for she was interrupting a full day.
“What can I do for you?” and he glanced at her card and started to say, “Miss Andrews.” Then he looked at her slightly olive skin and the suggestion of a curve in her hair and compromised on “Madam.”
Miss Andrews began calmly with lowered eyes. She had on a new midnight-blue tailor-made frock with close-fitting felt hat to match, gay-cuffed black kid gloves, gun-metal stockings, and smart black patent leather pumps. On the whole she was pleased with her appearance.
​"I am trying to get a pardon for Matthew Towns, and I want your help.
“Who is Matthew Towns?”
The question again did not carry the conviction that Mr. Green did not really remember. But Sara was discreet and carefully rehearsed the case.
“Oh, yes, I remember—well, he got what he deserved, didn’t he?”
“No, he saved the train and got what somebody else deserved.”
“Why didn’t he reveal the real culprits?”
“That is the point. He may be shielding some persons who we might all agree should be shielded. He may be shielding the dead. He may be shielding criminals now free to work and conspire. But in all probability, he does not know who planned the deed. He was a blind tool. In any case he should go free. For surely, Mr. Green, no one is foolish enough to believe this was the plan of a mere porter.”
“Have you any new evidence?”
“Not exactly court evidence,” said Sara, “and yet I betray no confidence when I say that we have information and it is much in favor of Towns.”
“And what do you want of me?”
“I have come to ask you to sign a request for Matthew Towns’ pardon. You see, if you do, it will clear up the whole matter.” And she looked Mr. Green full in the face. Her eyes were a bit hard, but her voice was almost caressing.
“I am sure,” she said, “that the colored people of America are needlessly alarmed over the Klan, and that you are really their friends in the long run. Nothing would prove this more clearly than a fine, generous action on your part like this.”
“But do you think it possible that Towns knows—nothing more of the real perpetrators of the plot?”
“If he did, why didn’t he talk? Why doesn’t he talk now? Reporters would rush to print his story. Indeed, the longer he stays in jail, the more he may try to remember. No, Mr. Green, I am sure that Towns either knows nothing more or will never tell it in jail or out.”
Mr. Green signed the petition.
A month later, in Chicago, Sammy was close closeted with his congressman.
​“This Towns matter: Pullman people are willing; railroads don’t object. Even the Klan is asking for it, and the Republicans better move before the Democrats get credit.”
Two weeks later the congressman saw the chairman of the National Republican Committee. The matter got to the Governor a week after that. In April it was very quietly announced that because of certain new evidence and other considerations, and at the request of the Ku Klux Klan, Matthew Towns had been pardoned. The Honorable Sammy Scott and his secretary went to Joliet and took the pardon to the prisoner.
IV
The great Jewish synagogue in Chicago, which the African Methodist Church had bought for half a million dollars in mortgages, was packed to its doors, May first, and an almost riotous crowd outside was demanding admittance. The Honorable Sammy Scott promised them an overflow meeting. Within, all the dignitaries of black Chicago were present. And, in addition, the mayor, the congressman from the black belt, and an unusual outpouring of reporters, represented the great whitecity. On the platform in the center in a high-backed, heavily-upholstered church chair sat the presiding officer, the Right Reverend John Carnes, Presiding Bishop of the District—an inspiring figure, too fat, but black and dignified. At his left sat the mayor, two colored members of the legislature, and several clergymen. At his right sat two aldermen and a con-gressman, and a tall, thin young man with drawn face andhaunted eyes.
Matthew Towns made a figure almost pitiful. He sat drooping forward, half filling the wide chair, and staring blankly at the great audience. At his left was the chairman, and at his right sat the fat old congressman in careless dress, with his shifty eyes; down below the great audience milled and stirred, whispered and quivered.
It was an impressive sight. Every conceivable color of skin glowed and reflected beneath the glare of electricity. There was the strong bronze that burned almost black beneath the light, and the light brown that was a glowing gold. There was every shade of brown, from red oak to copper gold, There were all ​the shades of gold and cream. And there were yellows that were red and brown; and chalk-like white.
There was every curl and dress of hair. There was every style of clothing, from jewels and evening dress to the rough, clean Sunday coat of the laborer and the blue mohair of his wife. All expressions played on the upturned faces: inquiry, curiosity, eager anticipation, cynical doubt.
The Honorable Sammy was nervous. He did not go on the platform. He hovered back in the rear of the audience, with a hearty handshake here and a slap on the back there.
“Hello, old man. Well, well, well! And Johnson, as I am alive! My God! but you’re looking fit, my boy, fit. Well, what’s the good word? What do you know? Mother James, as I’m a sinner! Here, Jack! Seat for Mrs. James? Must find one. Why, I’d—” etc., etc.
But Sammy was nervous. He didn’t “like the look of that bird on the platform.” Somehow, he didn’t look the part. Why, my God, with that audience he had the cream and pick of black Chicago and the ears of the world. There was one of the Tribune’s best men, and the Examiner and the News and the Post had reporters. Good Lord, what a scoop, if they could put it over! He had Chicago in the palm of his hand. But “that bird don’t look the part!” and Sammy groaned aloud.
Sara had pushed him into this, She was getting too bossy, too domineering; he’d have to put the reins on her, perhaps get rid of her altogether. Well, not that, of course; she was valuable, but she must stop making him do things against his better judgment. He never had quite cottoned to this jailbird, nohow. Who ever heard of a sane man going to jail to save somebody else? It wasn’t natural. Something must be wrong with him. Look at those eyes.
Where was Sara? Perhaps she could manage to pump some gumption into him, even at the last moment. If this thing failed, if Towns said the wrong thing or didn’t say the right one, he would be knocked into a cocked hat. He had had a hard time bringing the pardon off anyhow. The congressman was skittish; feared the Governor: “Don’t like to touch it, Sam. My advice is to drop it.”
But Sammy, egged on by Sara, had insisted.
“Alright, I'll try it. But look here, nothing else. If I pull ​this pardon through, that five thousand dollars I promised for the campaign is off. I can’t milk the railroads for both.”
Sammy had hesitated and consulted Sara.
“Five thousand dollars is five thousand dollars.”
And then he would need the cash this fall. But Sara was adamant.
“Five thousand dollars isn’t a drop compared with this if we put it over.”
And now Sammy groaned again. If he failed—“God damn it to hell!—Where is Sara?”
The exercises had opened. A rousing chorus began that raised the roof and hurled its rhythm against the vibrating audience; an impressive and dignified introduction by the Bishop, and a witty, even if somewhat evasive, speech by the mayor. Sammy began to sweat, and his smile wore off.
The congressman started to introduce the “gentleman whom we all are waiting to hear—the hero, the martyr—Matthew Towns!” There was a shout that rose, gathered, and broke. Then a hush fell over the audience. Matthew seemed to hesitate. He started to rise—stopped, looked helplessly about, and then got slowly to his feet and leaned against the pulpit awkwardly.
“O Lord!” groaned Sammy, “O Lord!”
“I am not a speaker,” said Matthew slowly.
(“It’s the God’s truth,” said Sammy.)
“I have really nothing to say.” (“And you’re sure sayin’ it, bo,” snarled Sammy.) “And if I had I would not know how to.” And then he straightened up and added reflectively, “I am—my speech.” The audience rustled and Sammy was faint.
“I was born in Virginia—” And then swiftly and conversationally there came the story of his boyhood and youth; of his father and mother; of the cabin and the farm. He had not meant to talk of this. The speech which Sara had at his request prepared for him had nothing of this, but he was thinking of his home. Then followed naturally the story of his student days, of his work and struggles, of the medical school, of the prizes, of his dreams. The audience sat in strained and almost deathly silence, craned forward, scarcely breathing, at the twice-told human tale that touched every one of them, that they knew by heart, that they had lived through each in its ​thousand variations, and which was working unconsciously to the perfect climax.
(“My God”—whispered Sammy—‘“he’s putting it over—he’s putting it over. He’s a genius or God’s anointed fool!”)
Finally Matthew came to that day of return to his junior medical year. He saw the scene again—he felt the surge of hot anger; his voice, his great, full, beautiful voice, rose as again he threw his certificates into the face of the dean. The house roared and rang with applause—the men shouted, the women cried, and up from the Amen corner rose the roll and cadence of the slave song: “Before I’d be a slave I’d be buried in my grave and go home to my God and be free!”
Sammy leaned against the back wall glowing. It was a diamond stickpin for Sara!
Matthew awoke from the hypnotism of his own words, and the fierce enthusiasm died suddenly away. Yet he was no longer afraid of his audience or wanting words. With unconscious artistry he Jet his climax rest where it was, and he stood a moment with brooding eyes—a lean, handsome, cadaverous figure—and told the rest of his story in even, matter-of-fact tones.
“I ran away from my people and my work. I tried to hide, but I was sent back. I worked as a porter, and I tried to be a good porter. And all the time I wanted to help—to do a great thing for freedom and strike a great blow. I met a man. He was a fanatic; he was sinking into sin, and worse, he was planning a terrible deed. I sensed it and tried to dissuade him from it. I pointed out its impossibility and futility. But he cursed me for a coward and went on. I could have run away; I could have betrayed him. I did instead an awful thing—an awful deed which the death of an innocent man spurred me to. I do not know whether I was right or wrong, but I resolved to die on the train that my brave friend was resolved to wreck—and then—” Matthew paused, and the audience almost sobbed in suspense. “And then on the rushing train, Something would not let me do what I had planned. The credit is not mine. Something hindered; I stopped the train, but I did not betray my terrible friend. I went to jail. My friend—died—” He paused and groped; what was it he must say? What was it to which he must not forget to allude? He stood in silence ​and then remembered: “And, tonight, through the efforts of Sammy Scott I am free.”
That minute the Honorable Sammy Scott reached the apex of his career. The next day Matthew got a job, and Sara Andrews a diamond stickpin.
V
In jail Matthew Towns had let his spirit die. He had become one with the great gray walls, the dim iron gratings, the thud, thud, thud which was the round of life, which was life. Bells and marching, work and meals, meals and work, marching and whistles, Even, unchanging level of life, without interest, memory, or hope.
This at first; then, disturbing little things. As the greater life receded, the lesser took on exaggerated importance. The food, the chapel speaker, this whispered quarrel over less than a trifle; the oath and blows of a keeper.
“When I get out!”
Ten years! Ten years was never. If such a space as ten years ever passed, he would come back again to jail.
“They all do,” said the keepers; “if not here, elsewhere.”
The seal of crime was on him. It would never lift. It could not; it was ground down deep into his soul. He was nothing, wanted nothing, remembered nothing, and even if he did remember the trailing glory of a cloudlike garment, the music of a voice, the kissing of a drooping, jeweled hand—he murdered the memory and buried it in its own blood.
Then came the miracle. First that neat and self-reliant young woman who tried to make him talk. He was inclined to be surly at first, but suddenly the walls fell away, and he saw great shadowed trees and rich grass. He was bending over a dainty tea-table, and he talked as he had talked once before. But he stopped suddenly, angry at the vision, angry at himself. He became mute, morose. He took leave of Sara Andrews abruptly and went back to his bench. He was working on wood.
Then came the pardon. In a daze and well-nigh wordless, he had traveled to Chicago. He sat in the church like a drowning swimmer who, hurled miraculously to life again, breathed, and sank. He had no illusions left.
​He knew Sara and Sammy. They wanted to use him. Well, why not? They had bought him and paid for him. All his enthusiasm, all his hope, all his sense of reality was gone. He saw life as a great, immovable, terrible thing. It had beaten him, ground him to the earth and beneath; this sudden resurrection did not make him dizzy or give him any real hope. He gave up all thought of a career, of leadership, of greatly or essentially changing this world. He would protect himself from hurt. He would be of enough use to others to insure this. He must have money—not wealth—but enough to support himself in simple comfort. He saw a chance for this in politics under the command of Sara and Sammy.
He had no illusions as to American democracy. He had learned as a porter and in jail how America was ruled. He knew the power of organized crime, of self-indulgence, of industry, business, corporations, finance, commerce. They all paid for what they wanted the government to do for them—for their immunity, their appetites; for their incomes, for justice and the police. This trading of permission, license, monopoly, and immunity in return for money was engineered by politicians; and through their hands the pay went to the voters for their votes. Sometimes the pay was in cash, sometimes in jobs, sometimes in “influence,” sometimes in better streets, houses, or schools. He deliberately and with his eyes closed made himself a part of this system. Some of this money, paid to master politicians like Sammy Scott, would come to him, some, but not much; he would save it and use it.
He settled in the colored workingmen’s quarter of the Second Ward—a thickly populated nest of laborers, lodgers, idlers, and semi-criminals. In an old apartment house he took the topmost flat of four dilapidated rooms and moved in with an old iron bed, a chair, and a bureau.
Then he set out to know his district, to know every man, woman and child in it. He was curiously successful. In a few months scarcely a person passed him on the street who did not greet him. The November elections came, and his district rolled up a phenomenal majority for Scott’s men; it was almost unanimous.
He deliberately narrowed his life to his village, as he called it. One side of it lay along State Street in its more dreary and dilapidated quarter. It ran along three blocks and then back ​three blocks west. Here were nine blocks—old, dirty, crowded—with staggering buildings of brick and wood lining them. The streets were obstructed with bad paving, ashes, and garbage. On one corner was a church. Then followed several places where one could buy food and liquor. On State Street were a dance hall, a movie house, and several billiard parlors, interspersed with more or less regular gambling dens. There were a half-dozen halls where lodges met and where fairs and celebrations were carried on. And all over were the homes—good, bad, indifferent.
He was strangely interested in this little universe of his. It had within a few blocks everything life offered. He could find religion—intense, fanatical, grafting, self-sacrificing. He could find prostitutes and thieves, stevedores, masons, laborers, and porters. Thus his blocks were a pulsing world, and in them there was always plenty to do—a donation to the church when the mortgage interest was about due; charity for the old women whose sons and daughters had wandered off; help and a physician for the sick and those who had fallen and broken hip or leg or had been run over by automobile trucks; shoes and old clothes for school children, bail for criminals; drinks for tramps; rent for the dance hall; food for the wild-eyed wastrels; and always, jobs, jobs, jobs for the workers.
When the new colored grocery was started, Matthew had to corral its customers, many of whom he had bailed out for crime, The police were his especial care. He gave them information, and they tipped him off. He restrained them, or egged them on. He warned the gamblers or got them new quarters. He got jobs for men and women and girls and boys. He helped professional men to get off jury duty. He sent young girls home and found older girls in places worse than home. He did not judge; he did not praise or condemn. He accepted what he saw.
Always, in the midst of this he was organizing and corralling his voters. He knew the voting strength of his district to a man. Nine-tenths of them would do exactly as he said. He did not need to talk to them—a few words and a sign. Orators came to his corners and vociferated and yelled, but his followers watched him. He saw this group of thousands of people as a real and thrilling thing, which he watched, unthrilled, unmoved. Life was always tense and rushing there—a murder, ​a happy mother, thieves, strikers, scabs, school children, and hard workers; a strange face, a man going into business, a girl going to hell, a woman saved. The whole organism was neither good nor bad. It was good and bad. Rickety buildings, noise, smells, noise, work—hard, hard work—
“How’s Sammy?” he would hear them say.
“How many votes do you want? Name your man.”
Thus he built his political machine. His machine was life, and he stood close to it—lolling on his favorite corner with half-closed eyes; yet he saw all of it.
Above it all, on the furthermost corner, on the top floor, were his bare, cold, and dirty rooms. He could not for the life of him remember how people kept things clean. It was extraordinary how dirt accumulated. He never had much money. Sammy handed him over a roll of bills every now and then, but he spent it in his charities, in his gifts, in his bribings, in his bonds. There was never much left. Sometimes there was hardly enough for his food.
Long past midnight he usually climbed to his bare rooms—one of them absolutely bare—one with a bed, a chair, and a bureau—one with an oil stove, a chair, and a table.
Then in time the aspect of his rooms began to change. A day came when he went in for his usual talk with the secondhand man. Old Gray was black and bent, and part of his business was receiving stolen goods, the other part was quite legitimate—buying and selling secondhand stuff. Towns strolled in there and saw a rug. He had forgotten ever having seen a rug before then. Of course he had—there in Berlin on the Lützower Ufer there was a rug in the parlor—but he shook the memory away with a toss of his head.
This rug was marvelous. It burned him with its brilliance. It sang to his eyes and hands. It was yellow and green—it was thick and soft; but all this didn’t tell the subtle charm of its weaving and shadows of coloring. He tried to buy it, but Gray insisted on giving it to him. He declared that it was not stolen, but Towns was sure that it was. Perhaps Gray was afraid to keep it, but Towns took it at midday and laid it on the floor of the barest of his empty rooms. Connors, who was a first-class carpenter when he was not drunk, was out of work again. Towns brought him up and had him put a parquet floor in the bare room. He was afterward half ashamed to take that ​money from his constituents, but he paid them back by more careful attention to their demands. Then in succeeding months of little things, the beauty of that room grew.
VI
The Honorable Sammy was by turns surprised, dumbfounded, and elated. He could not decide at various times whether Towns was a new kind of fool or the subtlest of subtle geniuses; but at any rate he was more than satisfied, and the efficiency of his machine was daily growing.
The black population of Chicago was still increasing. Preperly organized and led, there were no ordinary limits to its power, except excited race rancor as at the time of the riot, or internal jealousy and bickering. Careful, thoughtful manipulation was the program, and this was the Honorable Sammy’s long suit. First of all he had to appease and cajole and wheedle his own race, allay the jealousies of other leaders—professional, religious and political—and get them to vote as they were told.
This was no easy job. Sammy accomplished it by following Sara’s advice; first he refused all the more spectacular political offices; he refused to run again as alderman, declined election to the legislature and the like; he secured instead a state commissionership (whence his “honorable”) where he still had power but little display; and of course, he was on the State Central Republican committee; then he “played” the clergy, helping with speeches and contributions of large size to lift their mortgages; he stood behind the colored teachers who were edging into the schools; he belonged to every known fraternal order, and at the same time he continued to protect the cabarets, the bootleggers, the gambling dens, and the “lodging” houses. Slowly in these ways his influence and word became well-nigh supreme in the colored world. Everybody “liked” the Honorable Sammy.
And Sammy found Matthew an invaluable lieutenant.
“By gum, Sara, we have turned a trick. To tell the truth, for a long time I distrusted that bird, even after his great speech. I was afraid he’d be a highbrow and start out reforming. Damned if he ain’t the best worker I ever had.”
“Yes he’ll do for the legislature,” said Sara. Sammy scowled. ​That was like Sara. Whenever he yielded an inch, off she skipped with an ell.
“Slow, slow,” he said frowning; “we can’t push a new man and a jailbird too fast.”
“Sammy, you're still a fool. Don’t you see that this is the only man we can push, because he’s tied to us body and soul?”
“I ain’t so sure—”
“Sh!”
Matthew came in. He greeted them diffidently, almost shyly. He always felt naked before these two.
They talked over routine matters, and then without preliminaries Matthew said abruptly, “I’d like to take a short vacation. I ought to see my old mother in Virginia.”
“Sure,” said Sammy cheerfully, and drew out a roll of bills. Matthew hesitated, counted out a few bills, and handed the rest back.
“Thanks!” he said, and with no further word turned and went out.
Sammy’s jaw dropped. He stared at the bills in his hand and at the door. “I don’t like that handing dough back,” he said. “It ain’t natural.”
“He may be honest,” said Sara.
“And in politics? Humph! Wonder just what his game is? I wish he’d grin a little more and do the glad hand act!”
“Do you want the earth?” asked Sara.
It was Christmas time, 1924, when Matthew came back to Virginia after five years of absence. Winter had hardly begun, and the soft glow of Autumn still lingered on the fields. He stopped at the county seat three miles from home and went to the recorder’s office. It was as he had thought; his mother’s little farm of twenty acres was mortgaged, and only by the good-natured indulgence of the mortgagee was she living there and paying neither interest nor rent.
“Don’t want to disturb Sally, you know. She’s our folks. Used to belong to my grandfather. So you’re her boy, hey? Heard you was dead—then heard you was in jail. Well, well; and what’s your business—er—and what’s your name? Matthew Towns? Sure, sure, the old family name. Well, Matthew, it'll take near on a thousand dollars to clear that place.”
Matthew paid five hundred cash and arranged to pay the ​rest and to buy the other twenty acres next year—the twenty acres of tangled forest, hill, and brook that he always had wanted as a boy; but his father strove for the twenty smoother acres—strove and failed.
Then slowly Matthew walked out into the country and into the night. He slept in an empty hut beside the road and listened to creeping things. He heard the wind, the hooting of the owls, and saw the sun rise, pale gold and crimson, over the eastern trees. He washed his face by the roadside and then sat waiting—waiting for the world.
He sat there in the dim, sweet morning and swung his long limbs. He was a boy again, with the world before him. Beyond the forest, it lay magnificent—wonderful—beautiful—beautiful as one unforgettable face. He leaped to the ground and clenched his hand. A wave of red shame smothered his heart. He had not known such a rush of feeling for a year. He thought he had forgotten how to feel. He knew now why he had come here. It was not simply to see that poor old mother. It was to walk in her footsteps, to know if she had carried his last message.
A bowed old black man crept down the road.
“Good morning, sir.”
“Good mo’nin’—good mo’nin’. Fine mo’nin’, And who might you be, sah? Pears like I know you.”
“I am Matthew Towns.”
The old man slowly came nearer. He stretched out his hand and touched Matthew. And then he said:
“She said you wuzn’t dead. She said God couldn’t let you die till she put her old hands on your head. And she sits waitin’ for you always, waitin’ in the cabin do’.”
Matthew turned and went down to the brook and crossed it and walked up through the black wood and came to the fence. She was sitting in the door, straight, tall, big and brown. She was singing something low and strong. And her eyes were scanning the highway. Matthew leaped the fence and walked slowly toward her down the lane.
VII
Sara Andrews sat in Matthew’s flat in the spring of 1925 and looked around with a calculating glance. It was in her eyes a ​silly room; a man’s room, of course. It was terribly dirty and yet with odd bits—a beautiful but uneven parquet floor, quite new; a glorious and costly rug that had never been swept; old books and pamphlets lay piled about, and in the center was a big dilapidated armchair, sadly needing new upholstery. The room was proof that Matthew needed a home. She would invite him to hers. It might lead to something, and Sara looked him over carefully as he bent over the report which she had brought. Outside his haunted eyes and a certain perpetual lack of enthusiasm, he was very good to look at. Very good. He needed a good barber and a better tailor. Sara’s eyes narrowed. She didn’t quite like the fact that he never noticed her tailor nor hairdresser.
They were expecting the Honorable Sammy to breeze in any moment. They formed a curious troika, these three: Sammy, the horse of guidance in the shafts, was the expert on the underworld—the “boys,” liquor, prostitution, and the corresponding parts of the white world. He was the practical politician; he saw that votes were properly counted, jobs distributed where they would do his organization most good; and he handled the funds. Sara was intellectually a step higher; she knew the business interests of the city and what they could and would pay for privilege. She was in touch with public service organizations and chambers of commerce and knew all about the leading banks and corporations. Her letters and advice did tricks and brought a growing stream of gold of which Sammy had never before dreamed. Alas, too, it brought interference with some of his practical plans and promises which annoyed him, although he usually yielded under pressure.
Matthew was quite a different element. On the one hand he knew the life of his section of the Chicago black world as no one else. He had not artificially extracted either the good or the evil for study and use—he took it all in with one comprehensive glance and thus could tell what church and school and labor thought and did, as well as the mind of the underworld. At the other end of the scale was his knowledge of national and international movements; his ability to read and digest reports and recent literature was an invaluable guide for Sara and corrective for Sammy.
Much of all this report and book business was Greek to ​Sammy. Sammy never read anything beyond the headlines of newspapers, and they had to be over an inch high to get his undivided attention. Gossip from high and low sources brought him his main information. Sara read the newspapers, and Matthew the magazines and books. Thus Sammy’s political bark skimmed before the golden winds with rare speed and accuracy.
Sammy came in, and they got immediately to business.
“I’m stumped by this legislature business,” growled Sammy. “Smith picked a hell of a time to die. Still, p’raps it was best. There was a lot of stink over him anyhow. Now here comes a special election, and if we ain’t careful it’ll tear the machine to pieces. Every big nigger in Chicago wants the job. We need a careful man or hell’ll be to pay. I promised the next opening to Corruthers. He expects it and he’s earned it; Corruthers will raise hell and spill the beans if I fail him.”
“Smith was a fool,” said Sara, “and Corruthers is a bag of wind when he’s sober and an idiot when he’s drunk, which is his usual condition. We’ve got to can that type. We’ve got to have a man of brains and knowledge in the legislature this fall, or we'll lose out. We’re in fair way to make ‘Negro’ and ‘grafter’ synonymous in Illinois office-holding. It won’t do. There’s some big legislation coming up—street-car consolidation and super-power. Here’s a chance, Sammy, to put in our own man, and a man of high type, instead of boosting a rival boss and courting exposure for bribery.”
“Well, can’t we tell Corruthers how to act and vote? He ought to stay put.”
“No. There are some things that can’t be told. Corruthers is a born petty grafter. When he sees a dollar, he goes blind to everything else. He has no imagination nor restraint. We can’t be at his shoulder at every turn; he’d be sure to sell out for the flash of a hundred-dollar bill any time and lose a thousand and get in jail. Then, too, if he should make good, next year Boss Corruthers would be fighting Boss Scott.”
Sammy swore. “If I ditch him, I’ll lose this district.”
“With a strong nomination there’s a chance,” said Matthew.
Sara glanced at him and added: “Especially if I organize the women.”
Sammy tore at his hair: “Don’t touch ’em,” he cried. “Let em alone! My God! What’d I do with a bunch of skirts ​dippin’ in? Ain’t we got ’em gagged like they ought to be? What’s the matter with the State Colored Women’s Republican Clubs? And the Cook County organization, with their chairman sitting in on the County Central and women on each ward committee?”
But Sara was obdurate. “Don’t be a fool, Sammy. You know these women are nothing but ‘me-too’s,’ or worse, for the men. I’m going to have a new organization, independent of the ward bosses and loyal to us. I’m going to call it the Chicago Colored Woman’s Council—no, it isn’t going to be called Republican, Democratic, or Socialist; just colored. I’m going to make it a real political force independent of the men. The women are in politics already, although they don’t know it, and somebody is going to tell them soon. Why not us? And see that they vote right?”
“The white women’s clubs are trying to bring the colored clubs in line for a stand on the street-car situation and new working-women laws,” added Matthew.
Sammy brooded. “I don’t like it. It’s dangerous. Once give ’em real power, and who can hold them?”
“I can.”
“Yes, and who'll hold you?”
Sara did not answer, and Sammy switched back to the main matter.
“I s’pose we’ve got to hunt another man for Smith’s place. I see a fight ahead.”
Matthew’s guests left, and he discovered that he had forgotten to get his laundry for now the second week. He stepped down to the Chinaman’s for his shirts and a chat.
Then came a shock, as when an uneasy sleeper, drugged with weariness, hears the alarm of dawn. The Chinaman liked him and was grateful for protection against the police and rowdies. He liked the Chinaman for his industry, his cleanliness, his quiet philosophy of life. Once he tried a pipe of opium there, but it frightened him. He saw a Vision.
Tonight the Chinaman was “velly glad” to see him. Had been watching for him several days—had “a flend” who knew him. Matthew looked about curiously, and there in the door stood his young Chinese friend of Berlin. Several times in his life—oh, many many times, that dinner scene had returned vividly to his imagination, but never so vividly as now. It ​leapt to reality. The sheen of the silver and linen was there before him, the twinkling of cut glass; he heard the low and courteous conversation—the soft tones of the Japanese, the fuller tones of the Egyptian, and then across it all the sweet roll of that clear contralto—dear God!—he gripped himself and hurled the vision back to hell.
“How do you do!” he said calmly, shaking the Chinaman’s eager hand.
“I am so glad—so glad to see you,” the Chinaman said. “I am hurrying home to China, but I heard you were here, and I had to wait to see you. How—”
But Matthew interrupted hastily, “And how is China?”
The yellow face glowed. “The great Day dawns,” he said. “Freedom begins. Russia is helping. We are marching forward. The Revolution is on. To the sea with Europe and European slavery! Oh, I am happy.”
“But will it be easy sailing?”
“No, no—hard—hard as hell. We are in for suffering, starvation, revolt and reverse, treason and lying. But we have begun. The beginning is everything. We shall never end until freedom comes, if it takes a thousand years.”
“You have been living in America?”
“Six months. I am collecting funds. It heartens one to see how these hard-working patriots give. I have collected two millions of dollars.”
“God!” groaned Matthew. “Our N. A. A. C. P. collected seventy-five thousand dollars in two years, and twelve million damn near fainted with the effort.”
The Chinaman looked sympathetic.
“Ah,” he said hesitatingly. “Doesn’t it go so well here?”
“Go? What?”
“Why—Freedom, Emancipation, Uplift—union with all the dark and oppressed.”
Matthew smiled thinly. The strange and unfamiliar words seemed to drift back from a thousand forgotten years. He hardly recognized their meaning.
“There’s no such movement here,” he said.
The Chinaman looked incredulous.
“But,” he said—“but you surely have not forgotten the great word you yourself brought us out of the West that night—that word of faith in opportunity for the lowest?”
​“Bosh!” growled Matthew harshly. “That was pure poppy-cock. Dog eat dog is all I see; I’m through with all that. Well, I’m glad to have seen you again. So long, and good-by.”
The Chinaman looked troubled and almost clung to Matthew’s hand.
“The most hopeless of deaths,” he said, as Matthew drew away, “is the death of Faith. But pardon me, I go too far. Only one other thing before we part. John here wants me to tell you about some conditions in this district which he thinks you ought to know. Organized crime and debauchery are pressing pretty hard on labor. You have such an opportunity here. I hoped to help by putting you in touch with some of the white laboring folk and their leaders.”
“I know them all,” said Matthew, “and I’m not running this district as a Sunday School.”
He bowed abruptly and hastened away.
VII
Matthew was uncomfortable. The demon of unrest was stirring drowsily away down in the half-conscious depths of his soul. For the long months since his incarceration he had been content just to be free, to breathe and look at the sunshine. He did not think. He tried not to think. He just lived and narrowed himself to the round of his duties. As those duties expanded, he read and studied, but always in the groove of his work. Sternly he held his mind down and in. No more flights; no more dreams; no more foolishness.
Now, as he felt restless and dissatisfied, he laid it to nerves, lack of physical exercise, some hidden illness. But gradually he began to tell himself the truth. The dream, the woman, was back in his soul. The vision of world work was surging and he must kill it, stifle it now, and sternly, lest it wreck his life again. Still he was restless. He was awakening. He could feel the prickling of life in his thought, his conscience, his body. He was struggling against the return of that old ache—the sense of that void. He was angry and irritated with his apparent lack of control. If he could once fill that void, he could glimpse another life—beauty, music, books, leisure; a home that was refuge and comfort. Something must be done. Then he remembered an almost forgotten engagement.
​Soon he was having tea in Sara’s flat. He began to feel more comfortable. He looked about. It was machine-made, to be sure, but it was wax-neat and in perfect order. The tea was good, and the cream—he liked cream—thick and sweet. Sara, too, in her immaculate ease was restful. He leaned back in his chair, and the brooding lifted a little from his eyes. He told Sara of a concert he had attended.
“Have you ever happened to hear Ivanoff’s ‘Caucasian Sketches’?”
Sara had not; but she said suddenly, “How would you like to go to the legislature?”
Matthew laughed carelessly. “I wouldn’t like it,” he said and sauntered over to look at a new set of books. He asked Sara if she liked Balzac. Sara had just bought the set and had not read a word. She had bought them to fill the space above the writing-desk. It was just twenty-eight inches. She let him talk on and then she gave him some seed-cakes which a neighbor had made for her. He came back and sat down. He tested the cakes, liked them, and ate several. Then Sara took up the legislature again.
“You can talk—you have read, and you have the current political questions at your fingers’ ends. Your district will stand with you to a man. Old-timers like Corruthers will knife you, but I can get you every colored woman’s vote in the ward, and they can get a number of the white women by trading.”
“I don’t want the notoriety.”
“But you want money—power—ease.”
“Yes—I want money, but this will take money, and I have none.”
“I have,” said Sara. And she added, “We might work together with what I’ve saved and what we both know.”
Matthew got up abruptly, walked over and stared out the window. He had had a similar idea, and he thought it originated in his own head. He had not noticed Sara much hitherto. He had not noticed any woman, since–since— But he knew Sara was intelligent and a hard worker. She looked simple, clean, and capable. She seemed to him noticeably lonely and needing some one to lean on. She could make a home. He never had had just the sort of home he wanted. He wanted a home—something like his own den, but transfigured by capable ​hands—and devotion. Perhaps a wife would stop this restless longing—this inarticulate Thing in his soul.
Was this not the whole solution? He was living a maimed, unnatural life—no love, no close friendships; always loneliness and brooding. Why not emerge and be complete? Why not marry Sara? Marriage was normal. Marriage stopped secret longings and wild open revolt. It solved the woman problem once and for all. Once married, he would be safe, settled, quiet; with all the furies at rest, calm, satisfied; a reader of old books, a listener to sad and quiet music, a sleeper.
Sara watched him and after a pause said in an even voice:
“You have had a hard shock and you haven’t recovered yet. But you’re young. With your brains and looks the world is open to you. You can go to the legislature, and if you play your cards right you can go to Congress and be the first colored congressman from the North. Think it over, Mr. Towns.”
Towns turned abruptly. “Miss Andrews,” he said, “will you marry me?”
“Why—Mr. Towns!” she answered.
He hurried on: “I haven’t said anything about love on your side or mine—”
“Don’t!” she said, a bit tartly. “I’ve been fighting the thing men call love all my life, and I don’t see much in it. I don’t think you are the loving kind—and that suits me. But I do think enlightened self-interest calls us to be partners. And if you really mean this, I am willing.”
Matthew went slowly over and took her hand. They looked at each other and she smiled. He had meant to kiss her, but he did not.
IX
It was a grand wedding. Matthew was taken back by Sara’s plans. He had thoughts of the little church of his district—and perhaps a quiet flitting away to the Michigan woods, somewhere up about Idlewild. There they might sit in sunshine and long twilights and get acquainted. He would take this lonely little fighting soul in his arms and tell her honestly of that great lost love of his soul, which was now long dead; and then slowly a new, calm communion of souls, a silent understanding, would come, and they would go hand in hand back to the world.
​But nothing seemed further from Sara’s thought. First she was going to elect Matthew to the legislature, and then in the glory of his triumph there was going to be a wedding that would make black Chicago sit up and even white Chicago take due notice. Thirdly, she was going to reveal to a gaping world that she already owned that nearly new, modern, and beautifully equipped apartment on South Parkway which had just been sold at auction. There was a vague rumor that a Negro had bought it, but none but Sara and her agent knew.
“How on earth did you—” began Matthew.
“I’m not in politics for my health,” said Sara, “and you’re not going to be, after this. It’s got three apartments of seven rooms with sleeping porches, verandas, central heating, and refrigeration. We'll live in the top apartment and rent the other two. We can get easily three thousand a year from them, which will support us and a maid. I’ve been paying for a car by installments—a Studebaker—and learning to drive, for we can’t afford a chauffeur yet.”
Matthew sat down slowly.
“Don’t you think we might rent the whole and live somewhere—a little more quietly, so we could study and walk and—go to concerts?”
But Sara took no particular notice of this.
“I’ve been up to Tobey’s to select the furniture, and Marshall Field is doing the decorating. We'll keep our engagement dark until after the nomination in the spring. Then we’ll have a big wedding, run over to Atlantic City for the honeymoon, and come back fit for the fall campaign.”
“Atlantic City? My God!” said Matthew, and then stopped as the door opened to admit the Honorable Sammy Scott.
Sammy was uneasy these days. He was in hot water over this legislature business, and he vaguely scented danger to his power and machine beyond this. First of all he could only square things with Corruthers and his followers by a good lump of money, if Matthew were nominated; and even then, they would try to knife him. Now Sammy’s visible source for more money was more laxity in the semi-criminal districts and bribes from interests who wanted bills to pass the legislature. Sammy had given freer rein to the red-light district and doubted if he could do more there or collect much more money without inviting in the reformers. Big business seemed his only ​resort, but here he was not sure of Matthew. There might be a few nominees who were willing to pay a bit for the honor, but Matthew was not among these. Sara was managing his campaign, and she was too close and shrewd to cough up much. Then, too, Sammy was uneasy about Sara and Matthew. They were mighty thick and chummy and always having conferences. If he himself had been a marrying man—
“Say, Towns,” he said genially, “I think I got that nomination cinched, but it’s gonna take a pot of dough. Oh, well, what of it? You’ve got the inside track.”
“Unless Corruthers double-crosses us,” said Matthew dryly.
“That’s where the dough comes in. Now see here, I’ve got a proposition from the traction crowd. They want to ward off municipal ownership and get a new franchise city-wide with consolidation. They’re going to offer a five-cent car fare and reversion to the city in forty-nine years, and they’re paying high for support. They’re going to control the nomination in most districts.”
“I’ll vote against municipal ownership any time,” said Matthew.
Sammy was at once relieved and yet troubled anew. He had an idea that Matthew would get squeamish over this and would thus lose the nomination, That would force Corruthers in. Sammy still leaned toward Corruthers. But, on the other hand, Corruthers would be sure to do some fool trick even if he were elected, and that or his defeat might ruin Sammy’s own plans for Congress next year. He was glad Matthew was tractable, and at the same time he suddenly grew suspicious. Suppose Matthew went to the legislature and made a ripping record? He might himself dare think of Congress. But no— Sara was pledged to Sammy’s plan for Congress.
“All right!” said Sammy noisily.
“But look here, Sammy,” said Matthew. “Things are getting pretty loose and free down in my district. Casey has opened a new gambling den, and there’s a lake of liquor; three policy wheels are running. The soliciting on the streets is open; it isn’t safe for a working girl after dark.”
“Well, ain’t they payin’ up prompt?”
“Yes—but—”
“Gettin’ squeamish?” sneered Sammy. My God! Was the ​fool going to cut off the main graft and try to depend on white corporations?
“No—I’m not, but the reformers are. We’re just bidding for interference at this rate.”
“Hell,” said Sammy. “It'll be whore-houses and not Sunday Schools that'll send you to Springfield, if you go.” Matthew frowned.
Sara intervened. “I'll see that things are toned down a bit. Sammy will never learn that big business pays better than crime. I’m glad you’re going to vote straight on the traction bill.”
Matthew still frowned. They both had misunderstood him—curiously. They suspected him of mawkish sentimentality—a conscience against gambling, liquor, and prostitution. Nothing of the sort! He had buried all sentiment, down, down, deep down. He was angry at being even suspected. Why was he angry? Was it because he felt the surge of that old bounding, silly self that once believed and hoped and dreamed—that dead soul, turning slowly and twisting in its grave? No, no, not that—never. He simply meant to warn Sammy that a district too wide open defeated itself and invited outside interference; it cut off political graft; gamblers were cheating gamblers; the liquor on sale was poison; prostitutes were approaching the wrong people—and, well—surely a girl ought to have the right to choose between work and prostitution, and she ought not to be shanghaied.
And then Sara. She assumed too much. If he had the beginning of the unrest of a new conscience—and he had not—it was over these big corporations. He began to see them from behind and underneath. A five-cent fare was a tremendous issue to thousands. The driblets of perpetual tax on light and air and movement meant both poverty and millions. Surely the interests could pay better than gamblers and prostitutes, but was the graft as honest? Was he going on as unquestioningly? He had promised to vote against municipal ownership quickly and easily. Voters were too stupid or too careless to run big business. Municipal ownership, therefore, would only mean corporation control one degree removed and concealed from public view by election bribery. And after all, traction was not the real question. Super-power was that, and he talked his thought aloud to Sara, half-consciously:
​“Oh—traction? Sure—that’s only camouflage anyway. Back of it is the furnishing of electric power, cornering the waterfalls of America; paying nothing for the right of endless and limitless taxation, and then at last ‘financing’ the whole thing for a thousand millions and unloading it on the public! That’s the real graft. I am going to think a long time over those bills!”
What did he mean by “thinking a long time”? He did not know what he meant. Neither did Sara. But she knew very clearly what she meant. She was silent and pursed her lips. She was already in close understanding with certain quiet and well-dressed gentlemen who represented Public Service and were reaching out toward Super-Power. They had long been distributing money in the Negro districts, but their policy was to encourage rivalry and jealousy between the black bosses and thus make them ineffective. This kept payments down. Sara had arranged for Sammy to make these payments, while the corporations dealt only with him. Also she had raised the price and promised to deliver four votes in the legislature and three in the Board of Aldermen. Finally, she had just arranged to have Sammy’s personal representative occupy an office in the elegant suite of the big corporation attorney who advised Public Service and on his payroll as a personal link between Sammy and the big Public Service czar. It was the biggest single deal she had pulled off, and she hadn’t yet told Sammy. The selection of that link called for much thought.
X
The house was finished complete with new and shining furniture, each piece standing exactly where it should. Matthew had particularly wanted a fireplace with real logs, He was a little ashamed to confess how much he wanted it. It was a sort of obsession. As long as he could remember, burning wood had meant home to him. Sara said a fireplace was both dirty and dangerous. She had an electric log put in. Matthew hated that log with perfect hatred.
The pictures and ornaments, too, he did not like, and at last, one day, he went downtown and bought a painting which he had long coveted. It was a copy of a master—cleverly and daringly done with a flame of color and a woman’s long and ​naked body. It talked to Matthew of endless strife, of fire and beauty and never-dying flesh. He bought, too, a deliciously ugly Chinese god. Sara looked at both in horror but said nothing. Months afterward when they had been married and had moved home, he searched in vain for the painting and finally inquired.
“That thing? But, Matthew, dear, folks don’t have naked women in the parlor! I exchanged it for the big landscape there—it fits the space better and has a much finer frame.” Sara let the ugly Chinese god crouch in a dark corner of the library.
The nomination went through smoothly. The “election of Mr. Matthew Towns, the rising young colored politician whose romantic history we all know” (thus The Conservator) followed in due and unhindered course, despite the efforts of Corruthers to knife him.
So in June came the wedding. It was a splendid affair. Sara’s choice of a tailor was as unerringly correct as her selection of a dressmaker. They made an ideal couple as they marched down the aisle of the Michigan Avenue Baptist Tabernacle. Matthew looked almost distinguished, with that slight impression of remote melancholy; Sara seemed so capable and immaculate.
Sammy, the best man, swore under his breath. “If I’d only been a marrying man!” he confided to the pastor.
The remark was made to Matthew’s young ministerial friend, the Reverend Mr. Jameson, formerly of Memphis. He had come with his young shoulders to help lift the huge mortgages of this vast edifice, recently purchased at a fabulous price from a thrifty white congregation; the black invasion of South Side had sent them to worship Jesus Christ on the North Shore.
“Whom God hath joined together let no man put asunder,” rolled the rich tones of the minister. Matthew saw two wells of liquid light, a great roll of silken hair that fell across a skin of golden bronze, and below, a single pearl shining at the parting of two little breasts.
“Straighten your tie,” whispered Sara’s metallic voice, and his soul came plunging back across long spaces and over heavy roads. He looked up and met the politely smiling eyes of the young Memphis school teacher who once gave him fifteen cents. She was among the chief guests with her fat husband, ​a successful physician. They both beamed. They quite approved of Matthew now.
“’Tis thy marriage morning, shining in the sun,” yelled the choir, with invincible determination. The bridal pair stepped into the new Studebaker with a hired chauffeur and glided away. Matthew looked down at his slim white bride. A tenderness and pity swept over him. He slipped his arm about her shoulders.
“Be careful of the veil,” said Sara.
XI
In Springfield, Matthew was again thrust into the world. He shrank at first and fretted over it. Most of the white legislators put up at the new Abraham Lincoln—a thoroughly modern hostelry, convenient and even beautiful in parts. Matthew did not apply. He knew he would be refused. He did try the Leland, conveniently located and the former rendezvous of the members. He had dinner and luncheon there, and after he discovered the limited boarding-house accommodation of colored Springfield, he asked for rooms—a bedroom and parlor. The management was very sorry—but—
He then went down to the colored hotel on South Eleventh Street. The hotel might do—but the neighborhood!
Finally, he found a colored private home not very far from the capitol. The surroundings were noisy and not pleasant. But the landlady was kindly, the food was excellent, and the bed comfortable. He hired two rooms here. The chief difficulty was a distinct lack of privacy. The landlady wanted to exhibit her guest as part of the family, and the public felt free to drop in early and stay late.
Gradually Matthew got used to this new publicity and began to look about. He met a world that amused and attracted him. First he sorted out two kinds of politicians. Both had one object—money. But to some Money was Power. On it they were climbing warily to dazzling heights—Senatorships, Congress, Empire! Their faces were strained, back of their carven smiles. They were walking a perpetual tight rope. Matthew hated them. Others wanted money, but they used their money with a certain wisdom. They enjoyed life. Some got gloriously and happily drunk. Others gambled, riding upon the great ​wings of chance to high and fascinating realms of desire. Nearly all of them ogled and played with pretty women.
On the whole, Matthew did not care particularly for their joys. Liquor gave him pleasant sensations, but not more pleasant and not as permanent as green fields or babies. He never played poker without visioning the joys of playing European politics or that high game of world races which his heart had glimpsed for one strange year—one mighty and disastrous year.
And women! If he had not met one woman—one woman who drew and filled all his imagination, all his high romance, all the wild joys and beauty of being—if she had never lived for him, he could have been a rollicking and easily satisfied Lothario and walked sweet nights out of State Street cabarets. Now he was not attracted. He had tried it once in New York. It was ashes. Moreover, he was married now, and all philandering was over. And yet—how curious that marriage should seem—well, to stop love, or arrest its growth instead of stimulating it.
He had not seen much of Sara since marriage. They had been so busy. And there had been no honeymoon, no mysterious romantic nesting; for Matthew had finally balked at Atlantic City. He tried to be gentle about it, but he showed a firmness before which Sara paused. No, he would not go to Atlantic City. He had gone there once—one summer, an age ago. He had been refused food at two restaurants, ordered out of a movie, not allowed to sit in a boardwalk pavilion, and not even permitted to bathe in the ocean.
“I will not go to Atlantic City. If I must go to hell, I’ll wait until I’m dead,” he burst out bitterly.
Sara let it go. “Oh, I don’t really mind,” she said, “only I’ve never been there, and I sort of wanted to see what it’s like. Never mind, we'll go somewhere else.” But they didn’t; they stayed in Chicago.
So now he was a member of the legislature and in Springfield. The politicians came and went. The climbers avoided Matthew. Colored acquaintances were a debit to rising men. The other politicians knew him—jollied him and liked him— even drew him out for a rollicking evening now and then; but voted that he did not quite “belong.” He was always a trifle remote—apart. He never could quite let himself go and be wholly one of them. But he liked them. They lived.
​There were several members of the House who were not politicians. They did not count. They fluttered about, uttering shrill noises, and beat their wings vainly on unyielding iron bars.
Then there were men in politics who were not members of the legislature. Grave, well-dressed men of business and affairs. They came for confidential conferences with introductions from and connections with high places, governors, brokers, railway presidents, ruling monarchs of steel, oil, and international finance. And from Sammy; especially from Sammy and Sara. Money was nothing to them, and money was all. A thousand dollars—ten thousand—it was astounding, the sums at their command and the ease with which they distributed it. There was no crude bribery as on State Street—but Matthew soon learned that it was curiously easy to wake up a morning a thousand dollars richer than when one went to bed; and no laws broken, no questions asked, no moral code essentially disarranged. Matthew disliked these men esthetically, but he saw much of them and conferred with one or another of them nearly every week. It was his business. They did not live broadly or deeply, but they ruled. There was no sense blinking that fact. Matthew often forwarded registered express packages to Sara.
And he came to realize that legislating was not passing laws; it was mainly keeping laws from being passed.
Then there were the reformers. He held them—most of them—in respectful pity; palliators, surface scratchers. He listened to them endlessly and gravely. He read their tracts conscientiously, but only now and then could he vote as they asked. They were so ignorant—so futile. If only he, as a practical politician, might tell them a little. Birth control? Mothers’ pensions? Restricted hours of labor for women and children? He agreed in theory with them all, but why ask his judgment? Why not ask the Rulers who put him in the legislature? And without the consent of these quiet, calm gentlemen who represented Empires, Kingdoms, and Bishoprics, what could he do, who was a mere member of the legislature?
Yet he could not say this, and if he had said it, they would not have understood. They pleaded with him—he that needed no pleas. One was here now—the least attractive—one stocking awry on her big legs, a terrible hat and an ill-fitting gown. ​She was president of the Chicago local of the Box-Makers’ Union. Her breasts were flat, her hips impossible, her hair dead straight, and her face white and red in the wrong places.
“How would you like your daughter down there?” she bleated.
“I haven’t one.”
“But if you did have?”
“I’d hate it. But I wouldn’t be fool enough to think any law would take her away.”
“Well, what would?”
“Power that lies in the hands of the millionaire owners of factory stocks and bonds; and the bankers that guide and advise them. Transfer that power to me or you.”
“That’s it. Now help us to get this power!”
“How?”
“By voting—”
“Pish!”
“But how else? Are you going to sit down and let these girls go to death and hell?”
“I’m not responsible for this world, madam.”
“Listen—I know a woman—a woman—like you. She’s just been elected International President of the Box-Makers. She can talk. She knows. She’s been everywhere. She’s a lady and educated. I’m just a poor, dumb thing. I know what I want-but I can’t say it. But she’ll be in Chicago soon—I’m going to bring her to plead for this bill.”
“Spare me,” laughed Matthew.
But he kept thinking of that poor reformer. And slowly and half-consciously—stirred by a thousand silly, incomplete arguments for impossible reform measures—revolt stirred within him against this political game he was playing. It was not moral revolt. It was esthetic disquiet. No, the revolt slowly gathering in Matthew’s soul against the political game was not moral; it was not that he discerned anything practical for him in uplift or reform, or felt any new revulsion against political methods in themselves as long as power was power, and facts, facts. His revolt was against things unsuitable, ill adjusted, and in bad taste; the illogical lack of fundamental harmony; the unnecessary dirt and waste—the ugliness of it all—that revolted him.
He saw no adequate end or aim. Money had been his object, ​but money as security for quiet, for protection from hurt and insult, for opening the gates of Beauty. Now money that did none of these was dear, absurdly dear, overpriced. It was barely possible—and that thought kept recurring—it was barely possible that he was being cheated, was paying too high for money. Perhaps there were other things in life that would bring more completely that which he vaguely craved.
It seemed somehow that he was always passive—always waiting—always receptive. He could never get to doing. There was no performance or activity that promised a shining goal. There was no goal. There was no will to create one. Within him, years ago, something—something essential—had died.
Yet he liked to play with words, cynically, on the morals of his situation as a politician. In his office today, he was talking with a rich woman who wanted his vote for limiting campaign funds. He looked at her with narrowed eyes:
“We have got to stop this lying and stealing or the country will die,” she said impatiently.
He watched his unlighted cigarette.
“Lying? Stealing? I do not see that they are so objectionable in themselves. Lying is a version of fact, sometimes—often poetic, always creative. Stealing is a transfer of ownership, or an attempted transfer, sometimes from the overfed to the hungry—sometimes from the starving to the apoplectic. It is all relative and conditional—not absolute—not infinite.”
“It is laying impious hands on God’s truth—it is taking His property.”
“I am not sure that God has any truth—that is, any arrangement of facts of which He is finally fond and of which He could not and does not easily conceive better or more fitting arrangement. And as to property, I’m sure He has none. Every time He has come to us, He has been disgustingly poor.”
The woman rose and fled. Matthew sighed and went back to his round of thought. Municipal ownership of transportation in Chicago: he had begun to look into it. He was prejudiced against it by his college textbooks and his political experience. But here somehow he scented something else. Back of the demand made to kill the present municipal ownership was another proposal to renew the franchise of the street-car lines with an “Indeterminate Permit,” which meant in fact a perpetual charter. There was a powerful lobby of trained lawyers ​back of this bill, and what struck Matthew was that the same lobby was back of the movement to kill municipal ownership. Were they interested in super-power projects also? Matthew viewed this whole scramble as one who watches a great curdling of waters and begins to sense the current.
He was not evolving a conscience in politics. He was not revolting against graft and deception, but he was beginning to ask just what he was getting for his effort. Money? Some—not so very much. But the thing was—not wrong—no—but unpleasant—ugly. That was the word. He was paying too much for money—money might cost too much, It might cost ugliness, writhing, dirty discomfort of soul and thought. That’s it. He was paying too much for even the little money he got. He must pay less—or get more. Matthew sighed and looked at the next card. It was that of the Japanese statesman whom he had met in Berlin. He arose slowly and faced the door.
XII
“I trust I am not intruding,” said the Japanese.
Matthew bowed coldly. He gave no sign of recognizing the Japanese, nor did he pretend not to.
“Certainly not—these are my office hours.”
The Japanese was equally reticent and yet was just a shade too confidential to be an entire stranger. And again in Matthew’s mind flamed and sang that Berlin dinner party. Even the music floated in his ears. But he put it all rudely and brusquely aside.
“What can I do for you, sir? Be seated. Will you smoke?”
The Japanese took a cigarette, tasted it with relish, and leaned back easily in his chair. He glanced at the office. Matthew was ashamed. If he had been white, he would have had a room in the new Abraham Lincoln Hotel; something fine and modern, clean and smart, with service and light. If he had been black, free, and rich, he would perhaps have received his guest in a house of his own—delicately vaulted and soft with color; something beautiful in brick or marble, with high sweep of a curtain and pillar, a possibility of faint music, and silent deferential service. But being black, half slave, and poor, he had the front room of Mrs. Smith’s boarding-house, a show room, to be sure, but conglomerate of jarring styles and ​tastes, overloaded and thick with furnishings; with considerable dust and transient smells and near the noisy street. Matthew was furious with himself for thinking thus apologetically. Whose business was it how he lived or what he had?
Then the Japanese looked at him.
“I have been much interested in noting the increased political power of your people,” he said.
“Indeed,” said Matthew, noncommittally.
“When I was in the United States twenty years ago—” (So he had been here twenty years ago and interested in Negroes!)—“you were politically negligible. Today in cities and states you have a voice.”
Matthew was silent.
“I have been wondering,” said the Japanese with the slow voice of one delicately feeling his way—‘I have been wondering how far you have unified and set plans—”
“We have none,”
“—either for yourselves in this land, or even further, with an eye toward international politics and the future of the darker races?”
“We have little interest in foreign affairs,” said Matthew.
The Japanese shifted his position, asked permission, and lighted a second cigarette. He glanced appraisingly at Matthew.
“Some time ago,” he continued, “at a conference in Berlin, it was suggested that intelligent coöperation between American Negroes and other oppressed nations of the world might sensibly forward the uplift and emancipation of the darker peoples. I doubted this at the time.”
“You may continue to doubt,” said Matthew. “The dream at Berlin was false and misleading. We have nothing in common with other peoples. We are fighting out our own battle here in America with more or less success. We are not looking for help beyond our borders, and we need all our strength at home.”
It would have been difficult for Matthew to say what prompted him to talk like this. Mainly, of course, it was deep-seated and smoldering resentment against this man whose interference, he believed, had wrecked his world. Perhaps, of course, this was not true. Perhaps shipwreck was certain, but—he was determined not to sail for those harbors again, not for ​a moment even to reconsider the matter; and he repeated as his own the current philosophy of the colored group about him. It sounded false as he spoke, but he talked on. The Japanese watched him as he talked.
“Ah!” he said. “Ah! I am sorry. There were some of us who hoped—”
Matthew’s heart leaped. Questions rushed to his lips, and one word clamored for utterance. He beat them back and glanced at his watch.
The Japanese arose. “I am keeping you?” he said.
“No—no—I have a few minutes yet.”
The Japanese glanced around, and bending forward, spoke rapidly.
“The Great Council,” he said, “of the Darker Peoples will meet in London three months hence. We have given the American Negro full representation; that is, three members on the Board. You are chairman. The other two are—”
Matthew arose abruptly.
“I cannot accept,” he said harshly. “I am no longer interested.”
“I am sorry,” said the Japanese slowly. He paused and pondered, started to speak as Matthew’s heart hammered in his throat. But the Japanese remained silent.
He extended his hand. Matthew took it, frowning. They murmured polite words, and the visitor was gone.
Matthew threw himself on the couch with an oath, and through his unwilling head tramped all the old pageant of empire with black and brown and yellow leaders marching ahead.
XIII
Matthew was gray with wrath. Sara was quiet and unmoved.
“Yes,” she said. “I promised them your vote, and they paid for it—a good round sum.”
Matthew had been a member of the legislature of Illinois about six months. He had made a good record. Everybody conceded that. Nothing spectacular, but his few speeches were to the point and carried weight; his work on committees had been valuable because of his accurate information and willingness to drudge. His votes, curiously enough, while not uniformly pleasing to all, had gained the praise even of the ​women’s clubs and of some of the reformers, whom he had chided, while at the same time the politicians regarded Matthew as a “safe” man. Matthew Towns evidently had a political future.
Yet Matthew was far from happy or satisfied. Outside his wider brooding over his career, he had not gained a home by his marriage. The flat on South Parkway was an immaculate place which must not be disturbed for mere living purposes and which blossomed with dignified magnificence. At repeated intervals crowds burst in for a reception. There was whist and conversation, dancing as far as space would allow; smoking, cocktails, and smutty stories back in the den with the men; whispers and spiteful gossip on the veranda with the ladies; and endless piles of rich food in the dining-room, served by expensive caterers.
“Mrs. Matthew Towns’ exclusive receptions for the smarter set” (thus the society reporter of The Lash) were “the most notable in colored Chicago.”
And Sara was shrewd enough, while gaining this reputation for social exclusiveness, to see that no real person of power or influence in colored Chicago was altogether slighted, so that, at least once or twice a year, one met everybody.
The result was an astonishing mélange that drove Matthew nearly crazy. He could have picked a dozen delightful companions—some educated—some derelicts—students—politicians—but all human, delightful, fine, with whom a quiet evening would have been a pleasure. But he was never allowed. Sara always had good reasons of state for including this ward heeler or that grass widow, or some shrill-voiced young woman who found herself in company of this sort for the first time in her life and proclaimed it loudly; and at the same time Sara found excuse for excluding the “nobodies” who intrigued his soul.
Matthew’s personal relations with his wife filled him with continual astonishment. He had never dreamed that two human beings could share the closest of intimacies and remain unacquainted strangers. He thought that the yielding of a woman to a man was a matter of body, mind, and soul—a complete blending. He had never forgot—shamefaced as it made him—the way that girl in Harlem had twisted her ​young, live body about his and soothed his tired, harassed soul and whispered, “There, Big Boy!”
Always he had dreamed of marriage as like that, hallowed by law and love. Having bowed to the law, he tried desperately to give and evoke the love, But behind Sara’s calm, cold hardness, he found nothing to evoke. She did not repress passion—she had no passion to repress. She disliked being “mauled” and disarranged, and she did not want any one to be “mushy” about her. Her private life was entirely in public; her clothes, her limbs, her hair and complexion, her well-appointed home, her handsome, well-tailored husband and his career; her reputation for wealth.
Periodically Matthew chided himself that their relations were his fault. He was painfully conscious of his lack of deep affection for her, but he strove to evolve something in its place. He proposed a little home hidden in the country, where, on a small income from their rents, they could raise a garden and live. And then, perhaps—he spoke diffidently—“a baby.” Sara had stared at him in uncomprehending astonishment.
“Certainly not!” she had answered. And she went back to the subject of the super-power bills. The legislature had really done little work during the whole session, and now as the last days drew on the real fight loomed. The great hidden powers of finance had three measures: first, to kill municipal ownership of street-car lines; secondly, to unite all the street transportation interests of Chicago into one company with a perpetual franchise or “indeterminate permit”; thirdly, to reorganize, reincorporate, and refinance a vast holding company to conduct their united interests and take final legislative steps enabling them to monopolize electric and water power in the state and in neighboring states.
To Matthew the whole scheme was clear as day. He had promised to vote against municipal ownership, but he had never promised to support all this wider scheme. It meant power and street-car monopoly; millions in new stocks and bonds unloaded on the public; and the soothing of public criticism by lower rates for travel, light, and power, and yet rates high enough to create several generations of millionaires to rule America. He had determined to oppose these bills, not because they were wrong, but because they were unfair. For ​similar reasons he had driven Casey’s gambling den out of business in his district; the roulette wheel and most of the dice were loaded.
But Sara was keen on the matter. Lines were closely drawn; there was strong opposition from reformers, Progressives, and the labor group. Money was plentiful, and Sara had pledged Matthew’s votes and been roundly paid for it.
She and Sammy were having a conference on the matter and awaiting Matthew. Sara sensed his opposition; it must be overcome, Sammy was talking.
“Don’t understand their game,” said Sammy, “but they’re lousy with money.”
“I understand it,” said Sara quietly, “and I’ve promised Matthew’s vote for their bills.”
Sammy’s eyes narrowed.
Just then, Matthew came in.
“What have you promised?” he asked, looking from one to the other.
Sara quietly gathered up her papers.
“Come home to lunch,” she said, “and I'll tell you.”
She knew that she had to have this thing out with Matthew, and she had planned for it carefully. Sammy whistled softly to himself and did a little jig after his guests had left. He thought he saw light.
“I didn’t think that combination could last long,” he said to his new cigar. “Too perfect.”
Sara steered her Studebaker deftly through the traffic, bowing to deferential policemen at the traffic signals and recognizing well-dressed acquaintances here and shabby idlers there, who raised their hats elaborately. Matthew sat silent, mechanically lifting his hat, but glancing neither right nor left. They glided up to the curb at home, at exactly the right distance from it, and stopped before the stepping-stone. Sara flooded the carburetor, turned off the switch, and carefully locked it. Matthew handed her down, and with a smile at the staring children, they entered the lofty porch of their house. They opened the dark oaken door with a latchkey and slowly mounted the carpeted stairs. Sara remarked that the carpet was a little worn. She feared it was not as good as Carson-Pirie had represented. She would have to see about it soon.
A brown maid in a white apron smilingly let them into the ​apartment and said that lunch was “just ready—yes’m, I found some fine sweet potatoes after you ’phoned, and fried them.” Matthew loved fried sweet potatoes. They had a very excellent but rather silent lunch, although Sara talked steadily about various rather inconsequential things. Then they went to the “library,” which Matthew never used because its well-bound and carefully arranged books had scarcely a volume in which he had the slightest interest. Sara closed the door and turned on the electric log.
“I promised the super-power crowd,” she said, “that you would vote for their bills.”
It was then that Matthew went pale with wrath.
“How dared you?”
“Dared? I thought you expected me to conduct your campaign? I promised them your vote, and they paid a lot for it. Of course, it was cloaked in a real-estate transaction, but I gave them a receipt in your name and mine and deposited the money.”
Matthew felt for the flashing of a moment that he could kill this pale, hard woman before him. She felt this and inwardly quailed, but outwardly kept her grip.
“I don’t see,” she said, “any great difference between voting for these bills and against municipal ownership. It is all part of one scheme. I hope,” she added, “you’re not going to develop a conscience suddenly. As a politician with a future, you can’t afford to.”
The trouble was that Matthew himself suddenly knew that there was no real difference. It was three steps in the same direction instead of one. But the first was negative and tentative, while the three together were tremendous. They gave a monopoly of transportation and public service in Chicago to a great corporation which aimed at unlimited permission to exploit the water power of a nation forever at any price “the traffic would bear.” Of course it was no question of right and wrong. It was possible to buy privilege, as one bought votes; he himself bought votes, but—well, this was different. This privilege could be bought, of course—but not of him. It was cheating mental babies whom he did not represent—whom he did not want to represent.
He was a grafting politician. He knew it and felt no qualms about it. But he had always secretly prided himself that his ​exchanges were fair. The gamblers who paid him got protection; prostitutes who were straight and open need not fear the police; workers in his district could not be “shaken down” by thieves. Even in the bigger legislative deals, it was square, upstanding give and take between men with their eyes open. But this—there was no use explaining to Sara. She knew the difference as well as he. Or did she? That rankling shaft about “conscience.” He was a politician who was directly and indirectly for sale. He had no business with a conscience. He had no conscience. But he had limitations. By God! everybody had some limitations. He must have them. He would sell himself if he wished, but he wouldn’t be sold. He was not a bag of inert produce. He refused to be compelled to sell. He was no slave. He must and would be free. He wanted money for freedom. Well, he’d been sold. Where was the money? He wanted money. He must have it. There and there alone lay freedom, and his chains were becoming more than he could bear.
“Where is the money you got?” he said abruptly.
“I’ve invested it.”
“I want it.”
“You can’t get it—it’s tied up in a deal, and to disturb it would be to risk most of our fortune.”
“I’ve put some money in our joint account.”
“That’s invested too. What’s the use of money idle in a savings bank at four per cent when we can make forty ”
“How much are we worth?”
“Oh, not so much,” said Sara cautiously. “Put the house minus the first mortgage at, say, fifty thousand—we may have another ten or fifteen thousand more.” Thus she figured up.
“Matthew,” she added quickly, “be sensible. In a couple of years you'll be in Congress—the greatest market in the land, and we'll be worth at least a hundred thousand. Oppose these bills, and you go to the political ashpile. Sammy won’t dare to use you. My mortgagees will squeeze me. The city will come down on us for violations and assessments, and first thing we know we'll be penniless and saddled with piles of brick and mortar. As a congressman you can ignore petty graft and get in ‘honestly,’ as people say, on big things; in less than ten years, you'll be rich and famous. Now for God’s sake, don’t be a fool!”
Matthew Towns voted for the traction group of bills, but ​they were defeated by an aroused public opinion which neither Republicans nor Democrats dared oppose. Matthew at the same time saved from defeat at the last moment four bills which the Progressives and Labor group were advocating. They were not radical but were entering wedges to reduce the burden on working mothers, lessen the hours of work for women, and establish the eight-hour day. One bill to restrict the power of injunctions in labor disputes failed despite Matthew’s efforts.
The result was curious. Matthew was commended by all parties. The machine regarded him as safe but shrewd. The Farmer-Labor group regarded him as beginning to see the light. The Democrats regarded him as approachable. Sara was elated. She determined to begin immediately her campaign to send Matthew to Congress.
XIV
The Honorable Sammy Scott was having the fight of his life and he knew it. It almost wiped the genial smile from his lips, but he screwed it on and metaphorically stripped for the fray. He knew it was the end or a glorious new beginning for Sammy Scott.
Sammy’s first real blow had been Sara’s wedding. He had settled down to the comfortable fact that if Sara ever married anybody it would be Sammy Scott. At whom else had she ever looked—of whom had she ever thought? He was her hero in shrewdness and accomplishment, and he preened himself before her. There hung the fruit—the ripe, sleek, dainty fruit at his hand. He had only to reach out and pluck it. He was not a marrying man. But—who could tell? He might want a change. He might make his pile and retire. Or go traveling abroad. Then? Well, he might marry Sara and take her along. Time would tell.
And then—then without warning—without a flash of suspicion, the blow fell. Of course, others had talked and hinted and winked. Sammy laughed and pooh-poohed. He knew Sara. Nobody could take his capable secretary off the Honorable Sammy Scott. No, sir!
After the announcement and through the marriage, Sammy bore up bravely. He never turned a hair, at least to the public. He was best man and general manager at the wedding, and his ​present of a grand piano, with Ampico attachment, made dark Chicago gasp.
Gradually, Sammy got an idea into his head. Sara was a cool and deep one. Perhaps, perhaps, mused Sammy, as she left him after a long and confidential talk, perhaps this husband business was all a blind. Perhaps after the marriage with a rather dull husband for exhibition purposes, Sara was going to be more approachable. In her despair at not inveigling Sammy himself into marriage—so Sammy argued, waving his patent-leather shoes on their high perch—after her wiles failed, then perhaps she’d decided to have her cake and eat it too. All right—all the same to Sammy. Of course, he might have preferred—but women are curious.
He hinted something of this to Sara and got a cryptic response—a sort of prim silence that made him guffaw and slap his thigh. Of course, he had upbraided her first with disloyalty and quitting; but all this she disclaimed with pained surprise. She gave Sammy distinctly to understand—she did not say it—that she was loyally and eternally his steward forever and ever.
So Sammy was shaken but hopeful, and matters went on as usual until the second blow fell from a clear sky. Sara proposed to resign as his secretary! This brought him to his feet with deep suspicion. Was she double-crossing him? Was she playing him for a sucker? She had been in fact no more approachable to his familiarities since than before marriage—if anything, less. She actually seemed to be putting on airs and assuming a place of importance. If Sammy had dared, he would have dropped her entirely the moment she resigned. But he did not dare, and he knew that Sara knew it. He caught the glint in her gray eyes and almost felt the steel grip of her dainty hand.
Moreover, Sara explained it all very clearly. As the wife of a member of the legislature, it did not look quite the correct thing for her to be just a secretary. She proposed, therefore, to have an office of her own next Sammy’s where the work of her women’s organization could be done. At the same time, with an assistant, she could still take charge of Sammy’s business. Sammy had hopes of that assistant, but before he had any one to propose, Sara had one chosen. She was nothing to look at, but she certainly could make a typewriter talk. ​Business went as smoothly as ever, and Sammy couldn’t complain.
No, evidently Sara could not be dropped. She knew too much of facts and methods. So, ostensibly, Sammy and Sara were in close alliance and almost daily consultation, and they were at the same time watching each other narrowly.
The trouble culminated over the nomination for Congress. For thirty years, Negroes, deprived of representation in Congress, after White of North Carolina had been counted out, had planned and hoped politically for one end—to put a black man in Congress from the North. The necessary black population had migrated to New York, Philadelphia, and St. Louis; but in Chicago alone did they have not only the numbers but the political machine capable of engineering the deal. It had long been the plan of Sammy’s machine to have the white congressman, Doolittle, retire at the end of his present term and Sammy nominated in his stead. This was the ambition of Sammy’s life, the crowning of his career. He and Sara had discussed it for years in every detail. Every step was surveyed, every contingency thought out. It was only necessary to wait for enough political power in Sammy’s machine to dictate the nomination of one colored candidate among the myriad of aspirants. That time had now come.
Sammy was the recognized colored state boss; three aldermen and three colored members of the legislature took his orders; the colored judge owed his place to Sammy, and, while independent, was friendly. The public service corporations were back of Sammy with money and influence. Four “assistant” corporation counsels named by Sammy were receiving five thousand dollars a year each for duties that, to say the least, were not arduous; while the Civil Service, the Post Office, and the schools had hundreds of colored employees who owed or thought they owed their chance to make a decent living to the Honorable Sammy Scott. Finally, there was Sara’s Colored Women’s Council, through which for the first time the Negro women loomed as an independent political force.
Thus Sammy was dictator and candidate, and the party machine had definitely and categorically promised. The Negro majority in the First Congressional District was undoubted.
Now, however, and suddenly, matters changed. Since Matthew’s success, Sara had definitely determined to kill off ​Sammy and send Matthew to Congress. Sammy sensed this, and these politicians began to stalk each other. Sara’s task was hardest, and she knew it. Sammy was Heir Apparent by all the rules of the game. But there were pitfalls, and Sara knew them. She was going to make no mistake, but she was watching.
Gradually Sammy became less communicative. He had a number of secret conferences in the early spring of 1926, to which Sara, contrary to custom, was not invited; and his accounts of these meetings were vague.
“Oh, just a get-together—talkee, talkee; nothing important.”
But Sara wasn’t fooled. She knew that Sammy was in trouble and struggling desperately. The fact was that Sammy was sorely puzzled. First and weightiest, the white party bosses wanted Doolittle for “just one more term.” Doolittle held exceedingly important committee places in Congress, and especially as chairman of the Ways and Means Committee of the House, he was a power for tariff legislation. Millions depended on the revision which exporters, farmers, and laborers were demanding more and more loudly. Then there was legislation for the farmers and on the railroads and above all certain nation-wide super-power plans at Niagara, at Muscle Shoals and Boulder Dam. It was no question of “color,” the white leaders carefully explained. It was a grave question of party interests. Two years hence, the nomination was Sammy’s with bands playing. This year, Doolittle simply must go back, and money was no object.
That was reason Number One, and as money always was an object with Sammy, it loomed large in his thought. But that wasn’t all. Sammy did not trust Sara, and Sara, by efficiently organizing the colored women, had quietly become the biggest single political force in his colored constituency. Indeed, her new Colored Women’s Council was the most perfect piece of smoothly running political machinery that Sammy knew. He couldn’t touch it, and he had tried. Now Sara had an uncomfortably popular husband. Matthew was a successful member of the legislature, young and intelligent, with some personal popularity. His very aloofness, absent-mindedness, indifference to money or fame—increased his vogue. If Doolittle were forced to resign, could Sammy land the nomi​nation without Sara’s help? And with the knifing of men like Corruthers, who was still sore with Sammy; and particularly without the party slush fund?
Sammy hesitated and all but lost. He pocketed twenty-five thousand dollars for campaign expenses within a few days and consented to Doolittle’s renomination. But he did not dare announce it. Sara scented a crisis. She looked over his papers—always kept carelessly—and ran across his bank book. She noticed that twenty-five thousand dollar cash deposit. Then she got busy on the Doolittle end. She knew a maid long connected with the congressman’s family. Soon she had inside news. It was going to be announced that Doolittle was not to resign. His health (which was to have been the excuse) had been “greatly improved by a trip to Europe,” and the honor of another and strictly final term was to be given this “friend and champion of our race”!
Sara immediately took the high hand. She walked into Sammy’s office without knocking and closed the door. She was brief, inaccessible, and coldly indignant. She reminded Sammy of his solemn promise to refuse Doolittle another term; she accused him of being bribed and announced distinctly her withdrawal from all political alliance with the Scott machine!
Sammy was aghast. It was the coldest hold-up he had ever experienced. He promised her office, influence, money, and anything in reason for Matthew. She was adamant. She expressed great sorrow at this breaking of old ties.
“Oh, go to hell!’ growled Sammy and slammed the door after her. He knew her game, of course. She was going to run Matthew for Congress, and, by George, she had a chance to win, unless he could kill Matthew off.
Sara immediately gave her story to the newspapers, colored and white, and called meetings of all her clubs. Bedlam broke loose about Sammy’s devoted head. He was accused of “Betraying and Selling out his Race to White Politicians!” The Negro papers, by secret information or astonishingly lucky guess, named the exact sum he received—twenty-five thousand dollars. The white papers sneered at Negro grafting politicians and praised the upright and experienced Doolittle. Sammy’s appointees and heads of his political machine sat securely on the fence and said and did nothing. They were glad that Sammy had missed the nomination. They were waiting to know ​just what their share of the slush fund was to be. They were afraid of the popular uproar against Sammy. Above all, they feared Sara. It looked perilously like Sammy’s finish.
Sammy was no quitter. When he was “down, he was never out.” And now he really began to fight. Sammy turned to the gang he could best trust for underground dirty work. The very respectability which Sara had forced on him in his chief appointments greatly cramped his style. He had to go back to his old cronies and his old methods. He made peace with the Gang. Soon he had around him Corruthers and a dozen like him. Sammy promised the utmost liberality with funds and began by distributing scores of new hundred-dollar bills. They all decided that the case was by no means desperate. Towns could, at worst, defeat Doolittle at the election only by dividing the Republican vote. He himself had small chance for the Republican nomination. And even if he got it, Sammy could also split the vote and defeat him. As long then as the bosses stood pat for Doolittle, Towns’ only hope was to run on an independent ticket. Could he win? Probably not. Negroes did not like to scratch a straight Republican ticket. Meantime, however, in order to insure Doolittle’s election and keep their machine intact, Towns must be put out of the running altogether. As Sammy said: “We've gotta frame Towns.”
“Publish him as a jailbird.”
“What, after I got him pardoned as an innocent hero and worked that gag all over the country?”
“Knock him on his fool head,” sneered an alderman.
“There’s only one thing to do with a bozo like him, and that is to trip him up with a skirt.”
“Can’t he steal something?”
They went over his career with a fine-tooth comb until at last they came back to that lynching and train wreck and his jail record.
“I remember now,” said Sammy thoughtfully, “that Sara unearthed a lot of unpublished stuff.”
“We've got to discover new evidence and admit that we were fooled.”
Corruthers had been lolling back in his chair, smoking furiously and saying nothing. His red hair blazed, and his brown freckles grew darker. Suddenly now he let the two front legs of his chair down with a bang.
​“Oh, to hell with you all!” he snarled. “You don’t have to get no new evidence. I’ve had the dope to kill Towns for six months.”
Sammy did not appear to be impressed. He had little faith in Corruthers.
“What is it?” he growled, with half a sneer in his tone.
“It is this. Towns made that attack on the woman for which another porter was lynched on the Klan Special last year.”
Sammy sat up quickly. “Like hell!” he snapped.
“Yes, like hell! Towns confessed it to the executive committee of the porters. Said he was in the woman’s compartment when the husband discovered them. He knocked the husband down and escaped. The husband thought it was the regular car porter, and he got his friends and lynched him. Towns offered to tell this story to the general meeting of the porters and in court, but the committee wouldn’t let him. They let him say only that he knew the lynched porter was innocent, because he wasn’t in the car. They figured it would be bad policy to admit that the woman had been attacked by any one. I got this story from the secretary of the committee. After you ditched me for the nomination to the legislature, I tried to get him to come out with it and swear to it, but he wouldn’t. He was backing Towns. Then I tried to find the widow of the guy who was lynched. I knew she would tell the truth fast enough. Well, I couldn’t get her until the election was over, but I’ve got her now fast enough. She’s in New York, and I’ve been writing to her.
“And that ain’t all. Remember, there was another colored woman mixed up in this. Called herself an Indian princess and got away with it. Princess nothing! I figure she was in the blackmailing game with Towns, double-crossed him, and left him holding the bag. Slip me five hundred for expenses, and I'll go to New York tonight and round up both of these dames. We'll bury Towns so deep he’ll never see the outside of jail again.”
Sammy hesitated. He didn’t like this angle of attack. It was—well, it was hitting below the belt. But, pshaw! politics was politics, and one couldn’t be too squeamish. He peeled off five one-hundred-dollar bills.
That night Corruthers went east.
XV
Sara was delighted at Sammy’s move in the Doolittle nomination. If he had stuck to his original plan, it would have been difficult for her to refuse him her support. As it was, the chorus of denunciation at Sammy’s apostacy was easily turned to a chorus demanding the nomination of Matthew Towns to Congress, before the rival politicians in Sammy’s machine could prevent it. It was suggested that if the Republicans refused to nominate him and insisted on Doolittle, he might run independently and get support from the mass of the Negro vote, all the reformers, and, possibly, even the Democrats, in a district where they otherwise had no chance. Sara followed up the suggestion quickly. Club after club in her Colored Women’s Council nominated Matthew by acclamation, until almost the solid Negro women’s vote apparently stood back of him.
Matthew was astounded. He had never dreamed that Sara could effect his nomination to Congress, He resented her means and methods. He half resolved to refuse utterly, but, after all, it was a great chance, a door to freedom, power. But he would have to pay. He would have to strip his soul of all self-respect and lie and steal his way in. He knew it. What should he do? What could he do?
Sara had immediately taken the matter of Matthew’s nomination to the white women’s clubs and to the reformers. Here she struck a snag; Matthew had gained applause from the Farmer-Labor group for his support of some of their bills in the legislature; but after all, he was well known as a machine man and had voted at the dictation of big interests in the traction deal. How then could they nominate Towns, unless, of course, he was prepared to cut away from the machine and take a new progressive stand?
It was Mr. Cadwalader, leader of the Progressive group, speaking to Sara. She agreed that Matthew must take a stand. In her own mind it was a first step before she could coerce the Republicans. But how could she induce Matthew to play her game? It would be fairly easy for a trained politician. He would simply say that he was not opposed to municipal ownership but simply to this particular bill, and point out its defects. Defects were always easy to find. Then he would say ​that he knew that the “indeterminate permit” bill was doomed to defeat and that he could only get support for the other measures by promising to vote for it. This he could say and then make promises for the future, but not too many. But would Matthew do this? Of course not. He had no such subtlety. On the other hand, if he got up and tried to tell the straightforward truth, Sara had a plan that might work. Yes, it was worth trying. She did not see how she could avoid a trial.
“Matthew,” she said that night “I want you to come with me Tuesday and explain frankly to a committee of the Women’s City Club your attitude on the super-power projects.”
Matthew stared: “And how shall explain my vote?”
“By telling the truth. Then I’ll say a word.”
Matthew made no comment. Gradually in his own soul he had made a declaration of independence. He would not in the future, more than in the past, be hemmed in by petty moral scruples. He still honestly believed that burglary was ethically no worse than Big Business. But thereafter in each particular instance he was going to be the judge. He would buy and sell if he so wished, but he would not be bought and sold. He was glad to go before that club and talk openly and cleanly of traction and Super-Power.
The scene inspired him. They sat high up above the roaringcity, in a softly beautiful and quiet room. There rose before him intelligent faces—well-groomed and well-carried bodies, mostly of women. He saw clearly, behind their ease and poise, the toiling slavery of colored millions. He was not deceived into assuming that their show of interest would easily survive any real attack on their incomes or comforts. And yet they were willing to listen. Within limits, they wanted reform and the uplift of men.
Matthew knew his subject. He knew it even better than many experts who had spoken there, because he brought in and made real and striking the point of view and the personal interest not simply of the skilled worker, but of the laborer, the ditch-digger, the casual semi-criminal. They listened to him in growing astonishment. Here was a machine politician who had voted deliberately against his own knowledge and convictions, and yet who explained their own belief and aims much better than they could, and who nevertheless—
​“Why then did I vote as I did?”
He was about to say frankly that he voted at the dictation of the machine, but that he did not propose to do this again. He would hereafter use his own judgment. His judgment might not always agree with theirs. It might sometimes agree with the machine politicians’. But it would always be his judgment. Before, however, he could say anything, Sara arose. He saw her and hesitated in astonishment.
Sara arose. She looked almost pretty—simply but well gowned, self-possessed and nervously expectant. Matthew never was sure afterward whether she actually was nervous or whether this was not one of her poses.
She arose and said, “May I interrupt right here?”
What could Matthew say? He could hardly tell his own wife in public to shut up, although that was what he wanted to say. He had to bow grimly, even if not politely. The chairman smiled, looked a little astonished, and then explained: “This is perhaps not exactly the place where we would expect an interruption, but as most of you know, this is Mr. Towns’ wife, and she wants to say a word right here if he and you are willing.”
Many had thought Sara white. Now they all “could see that she was colored”! At least they pretended never really to have been in doubt—that slight curl in her hair—the delicate tint of her skin—the singular gray eyes, etc. But she was unusually well dressed—“yes, quite intelligent, too, they say—yes.” But what a singular point at which to interrupt! It would be especially interesting to hear the speaker proceed just here. But Matthew bowed abruptly and sat down. He was curious to see what Sara was up to. Her nimble mind always outran his in unguessed directions.
“He voted as he did because I had promised the politicians that he would, and he was too chivalrous to make me break my word, as he should have.”
Matthew gasped and glanced to the door. It was too far off and blocked with silk and fur.
“I know now I was quite wrong, but I did not realize it then. I received my political education, as many of you know, as a member of a political machine, where the first commandment is, Obey. I was and am ambitious for my husband. I was a little scared at his liberal views before I understood his rea​sons and until we had talked them over. The machine asked his vote against municipal ownership. He gave it. He explained to me as he has to you the case for and against municipal ownership in the present state of Chicago politics. He believed this bill meant indirect corporation control. Then the Interests—the same Interests—came to me about the other two bills. You see,” said Sara prettily, “we’re partners, and I act as a sort of secretary to the combination and write the letters and see the visitors.”
Matthew groaned in spirit, and one lady whispered to another that here was, at least, one ideal family.
“I promised them our support,” continued Sara, “without further thought. I probably assumed I knew more than I did, and perhaps I was too eager to curry favor for my husband in high places—”
“And perhaps,” whispered Mr. Cadwalader in the rear, “you got damned well paid for it.”
Sara proceeded: “I was wrong and my husband was angry, but I pleaded with him. Since then I have come to a clearer realizaton of the meaning and function of political machines. But I argued then that without the machine, colored people would get no recognition even from respectable and intelligent people; that the machine had elected my husband, and that he owed it support. Finally, he promised to support the bills in loyalty to me, but only on condition that afterward we resign from Sammy Scott’s organization. This we have done.”
There was prolonged appluase. They did not all believe Sara’s explanation, but they were willing to forget the past in the face of this seemingly definite commitment for the future. But Matthew gasped. It was the smoothest, coolest lie he had ever heard, and yet it was so near the truth that he had to rub his own inner eyes. He was literally dumb when members of the committees congratulated this ideal couple and promised to turn the support of the reformers toward Matthew’s independent nomination. Some saw also the wisdom of Sara’s delicate suggestion that this—almost domestic misfortune—be not broadcast yet to the public press, and that it only be intimated in a general way that Mr. Towns’ attitude was on the whole satisfactory.
XVI
There was war in Chicago—silent, bitter war. It was part of the war throughout the whole nation; it was part of the World War. Money was bursting the coffers of the banks—poor people’s savings, rich people’s dividends. It must be invested in order to insure principal and interest for the poor and profits for the rich. It had been invested in the past in European restoration and American industry. But difficulties were appearing—far-off signs of danger which bankers knew. European industry could only pay large dividends if it could sell goods largely in the United States. High tariff walls kept those goods out. American industry could pay large dividends only if it could sell goods abroad or secure monopoly prices at home. To sell goods abroad it must receive Europe’s goods in payment, This meant lower tariff rates. To keep monopoly at home, prices must be kept up by present or higher tariff rates. It was a dilemma, a cruel dilemma, and bankers, investors, captains of industry, scanned the industrial horizon, while poor people shivered from cold and unknown winds.
There was but one hope in the offing which would at once ward off labor troubles by continued high wages and yet maintain the fabulous rate of profit; and that was new monopoly of rich natural resources. Imperial aggressiveness in the West Indies, Mexico, and Africa held possibilities, when public opinion was properly manipulated. But right here in the United States was White Coal! Black coal, oil, and iron were monopolized and threatened with diminishing returns and world competition. But white coal—the harnessing of the vast unused rivers of the nation; monopolizing free water power to produce dear electricity! Quick! Quick! Act silently and swiftly before the public awakes and sees that it is selling something for nothing. Keep Doolittle in Congress. Keep all the Doolittles in Congress. Let the silent war against agitators, radicals, fools, keep up. Hold the tariff citadel a little longer—then let it crash with the old savings gone but the new investments safe and ready to take new advantage of lower wages and less impudent workers. So there was war in Chicago—World War, and the Republican machine of Cook County was fighting in the van. And in the machine Sammy and Sara and Matthew were little cogs.
​A Michigan Avenue ’bus was starting south from Adams Street in early March when two persons, rushing to get on at the same time, collided. Mrs. Beech, president of the Women’s City Club, was a little flustered. She ought to have come in her own car, but she did not want to appear too elegant on this visit. She turned and found herself face to face with Mr. Graham, the chairman of the Republican County Central Committee. They lived in the same North Shore suburb, Hubbard Woods, and had met before.
“I beg your pardon,” said Mr. Graham hastily. “One has to rush so for these ’buses that it is apt to be dangerous.”
Mrs. Beech smiled graciously. She was rather glad to meet Mr. Graham, because she wanted to talk some things out with him. They sat on top and began with the weather and local matters in their suburb. Then Mrs. Beech observed:
“The colored folks are certainly taking the South Side.”
“It is astonishing,” answered Mr. Graham. “What would the ghosts of the old Chicago aristocracy say?”
“Well, it shows progress, I suppose,” said Mrs. Beech.
“I am not so sure about that,” said Mr. Graham. “It shows activity and a certain ruthless pushing forward, but I am a little afraid of results. We have a most difficult political problem here.”
“So I understand; in fact, I am going to a meeting of one of their women’s clubs now.”
“Indeed! Well, I hope we may count on your good offices,” and Mr. Graham smiled. “I don’t mind telling you that we are in trouble in this district. We have got a big Negro vote, well organized under Sammy Scott, of whom perhaps you have heard. Scott and his gang are not easily satisfied. They have been continually raising their demands. First, they wanted money, and indeed they have never got over that; but they demanded money first for what I suspect amounted to direct bribery. This, of course, was coupled with protection for gambling and crime, a deplorable situation, but beyond control. This went on for a while, although the sums handed them from the party coffers were larger and larger. Then they began to want offices, filling appointments as janitors and cleaners at first; then higher and higher until at last the Negroes of Chicago have two aldermen, three members of the legislature, a State senator, a city judge and several commissionerships.”
​“They are proving apt politicians,” smiled Mrs. Beech.
“And they are not through,” returned Mr. Graham. “Today they are insisting upon a congressman.”
“Well, they deserve some representation, don’t they, in Congress?”
“Yes, that’s true; but neither they nor we are ready for it just yet. Membership in Congress not only involves a certain social status and duties, but just now in the precarious economic position of the country, we need trained and experienced men in Congress and not mere ward politicians.”
“Is Doolittle a man of such high order and ability?”
“No, he is not. Doolittle is an average politician, but he is a white man; he has had long experience; he holds exceedingly important places on the House committees because of his long service; and above all he is willing to carry out the plans of his superiors.”
“Or in other words,” said Mrs. Beech tartly, “he takes orders from the machine.”
“Yes, he does,” said Graham, turning toward her and speaking earnestly. “And how are we going to run this country unless thoughtful men furnish the plans and find legislators and workers who are willing to carry them out? We are in difficulties, Mrs. Beech. If the tariff is tinkered with by amateur radicals, your income and mine may easily go to smash, If securities which are now good and the basis of investment are attacked by Bolsheviks, we may have an industrial smash such as the world has seldom seen. We haven’t paid our share for the World War yet, and we may have to foot a staggering bill.
“Now, we have farsighted plans for guiding the industrial machine and keeping it steady; Doolittle is a cog, nothing more than a cog, but a dependable cog, in the machine. Now here come the Negroes of this district and demand the fulfillment of a promise, carelessly, and to my mind foolishly given several years ago, that after this term Doolittle was to be replaced in Congress by the head of the black political machine, Sammy Scott. Well, it’s impossible. I think you see that, Mrs. Beech. We don’t want Scott in Congress representing Chicago. He has neither the brains nor the education—”
Mrs. Beech interrupted. “But I understand,” she said, “that there is a young college-bred man who is candidate and who is intellectually rather above the average of our Congressmen.”
​“There certainly is,” said Mr. Graham, bitterly, “and he’s got a wife who is one of the most astute politicians in this city.”
“Yes,” said Mrs. Beech, “I am on my way to one of her meetings. It is at her home on Grand—I mean, South Parkway. I wonder where I should transfer?”
“I will show you,” said Mr. Graham. “We have still a little way to go. It would be just like Mrs. Towns to pull all strings in order to get you to her house. She has social aspirations and is the real force behind Towns.”
“But Towns himself?” asked Mrs. Beech.
“Towns himself is a radical and has a shady record. He was once in the penitentiary. His wife is trying to keep him in hand, but his appeal is to the very elements among white people and colored people which mean trouble for conservative industry in the United States. He cannot for a moment be considered. I have talked frankly to you, Mrs. Beech. We are coming to your corner now, but I wish we could come to some sort of understanding with the liberal elements that you represent. I do not think that you, Cadwalader, and myself are so far apart. I hope you will help us.”
Mrs. Beech descended and Graham rode on.
It was some hours later that Mr. Cadwalader and Mrs. Beech had dinner together. They represented various elements interested in reform. Mr. Cadwalader was the official head of the Farmer-Labor Party in Chicago, while Mrs. Beech represented one element of the old Progressive Party and looked toward alliance with Mr. Cadwalader’s group.
“But,” Mr. Cadwalader complained over his fish, “we’ve got an impossible combination. We cannot get any real agreement on anything. You and I, for instance, cannot stand for free trade as a present policy. It would ruin us and our friends. On the other hand, we cannot advocate a high tariff. We and our manufacturing friends want gradual reduction rather than increase of duties. Then, too, our friends among the farmers and the laborers want high and low tariff at the same time, only on different things. The farmers want cheap foreign manufactured goods and high rates on food; the laborers want free food and high manufacturing wages. Finally, we have all got to remember the Socialists and Communists who want to scrap the whole system and begin anew.”
​“I was talking with Mr. Graham yesterday,” said Mrs. Beech, “and he believes that the Republicans and the Farmer-Labor Party could find some common aims.”
“I am sure we could, if the Republicans would add to their defense of sound business and investment some thought of the legitimate demands of the farmer and laborer, and then would restrain legislation which directly encourages monopoly.”
“True,” said Mrs. Beech, “but wouldn’t any rapprochement with the Republicans drive out of your ranks the radicals who swell the potential reform vote? And in this case would we not leave them to the guidance of demagogues and emphasize the dangerous directions of their growth?”
“Precisely, precisely. And that is what puzzles me. You know, only last night I was visiting a meeting of one of the newer trade unions, the Box-Makers. It was organized locally in New York in 1919 and now has a national union headquarters there. The union here is only a year old, but it is the center of dangerous radicalism, with lots of Jews, Russians, and other foreigners. They want paternalism of all sorts, with guaranteed wages, restricted ages and hours of work, pensions, long vacations and the like; not to mention wild vaporings about absolute free trade; ‘One Big Union’; government ownership of industry, and limitation of wealth. And the trouble also,” continued Mr. Cadwalader, “is that this union has some startlingly capable leaders; two representatives from New York were there last night, and a letter from the National President was read which was dangerous in its sheer ability, appeal, and implications.
“I was aghast. I wanted to repudiate the whole thing forthwith, but I was afraid, as you say, that I would drive them bodily over to the Socialists and Communists. In general, I’m beginning to wonder if we could try to marshal this extreme movement back of Matthew Towns. I don’t exactly trust him, and I certainly do not trust his wife. But Towns has got sense. He is a practical politician. And it may be that with his leadership we can restrain these radicals and keep them inside a normal liberal movement.”
Mrs. Beech pushed her dessert aside and sat for a while in a brown study.
“I am wondering too just how much can be done in this one Chicago congressional district, to use Towns and his wife in ​order to unite Republicans and Progressives, so as to begin a movement which should liberalize the Republican Party and stabilize the radicals. Unless we do this, or at least begin somewhere to do it, I see little hope for reform in politics. A third party in the United States is impossible on account of the Solid South. They are a dead weight and handicap to all political reform. They have but one shibboleth, and that is the Negro.”
“Yes,” said Mr. Cadwalader, “and the Democrats play their usual rôle in this campaign. Their positive policies are exactly the same as the Republicans’, They, of course, have no chance of winning in this political district, unless the Republicans split. Now with Towns’ revolt, the Republican machine is split and the Democrats are just waiting. If Towns should be nominated they would raise the question of the color line and yell ‘nigger.’ They might in this way elect one of their own number or some independent. If Doolittle is nominated, it is going to be hard to be hard to elect him if Towns runs as an independent; and in that case it might be good politics for the Democrats to back Towns and beat the Republican machine. So there they are on the fence, waiting.”
“On the other hand,” said Mrs. Beech, “down in the black trenches the war is bitter, as I gathered from my attendance at the meeting this afternoon. Sammy Scott, the boss, and Sara Towns were formerly close associates and know each other’s personalities, political methods, and secrets. They are watching each other narrowly and are utterly unhindered by scruples. What sort of personality has this man Matthew Towns? Do you know anything about him?”
“I’ve been looking up his record. He intrigues me. He had, I find, an excellent record in medical school. Then in silly pique he became a Pullman porter and, I judge, sank pretty low. He does not seem to have committed any crime, but went to jail on a technicality because he wouldn't betray some of his friends. Scott rescued him and used him. He’s got brains and education, but he’s queer and not easily approachable.”
“Well, if I were you,” said Mrs. Beech as she arose, “I’d get in touch with Towns and cultivate him. He may be worth while. His wife is a shrewd climber, but even that might be an asset.”
And so they parted.
XVII
The Honorable Sammy Scott was carefully planning his lines of battle and marshaling his forces. First he threw out certain skirmish lines—feints to veil his main action. Of course they might unearth or start something, but he was not putting his main dependence upon them. Of such a nature was Corruthers’ trip to the East. It flattered Corruthers and gave him something to do, and it left Sammy unhindered to arrange his main campaign. And, of course, it was also possible that something would come out of this visit.
Among his other skirmishing efforts, Sammy kept looking for the weak spots in Matthew’s armor, but was unable to find many. Matthew’s obvious faults rather increased his popularity. He drank liquor, but not much, and Sammy saw no chance to make him or keep him drunk. He tried bribery on Towns from every point of view, but personal graft had not attracted Towns even when he was in the machine, and Sammy had little hope that it would now. Nevertheless, he saw to it that Towns was offered a goodly lump sum to withdraw his candidacy. Of course, Towns refused. The trouble was, as Sammy argued, that his machine could not afford to offer enough. He did not dare make the offer to Sara. She was capable of pocketing cash and candidate too.
Sammy’s main dependence was to regain or split the Negro vote by careful propaganda; to reorganize his own machine and drive his leaders into line by the free use of money; and to alienate the church and the women from Towns by digging up scandals. Of course that second establishment that Matthew kept down where he used to live was a hopeful bit of scandal, only Sammy couldn’t discover the woman. Naturally there must be a woman, or why should he keep the rooms?
Finally Sammy would try, wherever possible, strong-arm methods to intimidate the independents. Beyond this he believed that in some way he might split the Progressive support back of Matthew by making Matthew say or do something that was too radical for men like Cadwalader, or by making him bind himself to a program which was too reactionary for the radical Laborites.
Sammy envisaged the situation thus: If all efforts failed and Matthew received the Farmer-Labor nomination and the ​support of the majority of the colored vote, nevertheless, a huge sum of money spent at the polls might even then defeat him. If bribery failed and the Negro vote stood solid, the Progressives gave full support and the Democrats secret aid, Matthew would be elected, but Sammy would emerge from the campaign able to tell the party bosses that the fault was theirs; they should have kept their promise and nominated him. After that, with a large campaign fund, he could reorganize his machine and keep watch on Matthew in office. If Matthew failed to do as the machine told him, and this would probably happen, Sammy would succeed to his job. If Matthew succeeded, he could and must be brought back into the Republican fold, which meant into Sammy’s machine.
Of course, all these possibilities which hinged on Matthew’s successful election were wormwood to Sammy, and he concentrated fiercely on forestalling such success. He was sitting alone in his office this night and thinking things out when there came a ’phone call. It was Corruthers.
Corruthers came in a half hour later. Corruthers was a cadaverous blond, red-headed and freckled, a drunkard, a dope fiend, and a spellbinder, with brains and no self-control, thoroughly dishonest and extremely likable. He claimed to be a nephew of Frederick Douglass. He looked distinctly glum.
Corruthers was one of those who are dangerous only when they are successful. Once he began to lose he gave up. Sammy was quite different. He was most dangerous losing. It was then that he fought furiously and to the last ditch. Evidently Corruthers had been disappointed and was ready to surrender.
“Didn’t do a thing,” he said, “not a thing. Sure, I found the widow of that porter who was lynched. She’s working in New York. But, my God! she thinks Towns is Jesus Christ and won’t hear a word against him. Swears that the story that he attacked anybody is a lie and threatens to go to court if anybody says that Towns was responsible for her husband’s death. I can’t figure her out at all. I know the story that I got was the truth, but I can’t prove it.
“Then I tried to get a line on that dead man in the wreck. He may have been a fellow named Perigua. Some say he was, but others declare that Perigua went back to Jamaica and has been seen there since. I don’t know how it was. Then I was all wrong about that brown woman. She was an Indian prin​cess, sure enough, a high muck-a-muck and fabulously rich, Probably got interested in Towns because he was a good porter. At any rate, she’s gone back to India, so everybody says, although there again some declare that she has returned.”
“Well, what did you do about that?” asked Sammy impatiently.
“Well, I found out the address of her bankers and went down to inquire about her. Seems that her little country, Bwodpur, has some sort of commercial agency which I was referred to. It didn’t look like much. Mean little office, with two or three Indians sitting around. All I could do was to leave my address and say that I had some news for the lady about Matthew Towns; then I came home.”
“Hell!” said Sammy, lighting another cigar.
“But today,” continued Corruthers, “an East Indian called at my place and asked about Towns. Said he’d been sent.”
“What did you do with him?” asked Sammy.
“He’s outside,” said Corruthers.
“Well, for God’s sake! and gassing about nothing all this time! Bring him in.”
“Wait a minute,” said Corruthers. “What are we going to say to him? I couldn’t think of anything. Of course we might pinch him for a little cash.”
“Nix,” said Sammy, “leave him to me.”
The Indian entered. He looked thin and was poorly dressed. Sammy was disappointed, but he handed him one of his cheap cigars, which the Indian refused.
“I understand,” said the Indian in very good English, “that you have some message from or about Matthew Towns.”
“Ah,” said Sammy. “Not from him, but about him. Er’r, I believe the lady with whom you are connected is friendly with Mr. Towns.”
“Her Royal Highness in the past has deigned to express something like that.”
“And—still interested?”
“I do not know.”
“I mean, she wouldn’t let him suffer or get into trouble, and she wouldn’t want to get in trouble herself on account of him?”
“Perhaps not, but what is the case?”
Sammy paused thoughtfully and then started.
​“You see, it is this way.This fellow Towns got in jail for not peaching on a pal. I got him out. He made a good record in the legislature and his friends persuaded him to run for Congress. I’d be glad to see him go, but his enemies and the enemies of his race are threatening to bring up this old jail case, and they say that your Princess is involved. It would be a nasty mess to have her name dragged in publicly now. The only way out, as I see it, is for somebody to persuade Towns to withdraw. Can you or your lady manage this?”
“Very well,” said the Indian, arising.
“But can you do anything?”
“I do not know, I will report.”
And then Sammy said: “What! ’way to India?”
“Her Royal Highness is represented in this country. Good day.”
Sammy glowered after him.
“Royal Highness! Hell!” said Corruthers. “And see all the time wasted on that guy. We ought to have asked him straight for money.”
“Looks like a mare’s nest,” said Sammy, “but my rule is to try everything. Well, enough of that. Now my plan is to see what we can do to split the Progressives and this Farmer-Labor bunch, which is promising to support Towns. I know Sara’s game; she’s playing both ends against the middle. But I’m going to break it up.”
XVIII
Sara had, of all concerned, the most difficult road and the most brilliant prospects. She saw wealth, power, social triumph ahead if she could elect Matthew to Congress. But she knew just how difficult it would be to beat the Republican machine with its money and organization. Her first task was to hold the Negro vote back of Matthew. That was easy so long as he was a regular Republican. When he bolted Sammy’s machine, Sara had to capitalize race pride and resentment against Doolittle and Sammy. She continued to insist that Matthew was a good Republican but not a Sammy Scott henchman. For a while her success here was overwhelming, but could she hold it three months with hungry editors and grafting henchmen?
She concentrated on The Lash, whose editors had sharp ​tongues and wide pockets and kept them flaying Sammy and the Republicans. She went after her women’s clubs and cajoled and encouraged them by every device to stand strong. She made every possible use of the women’s organizations connected with the fraternal societies. She already belonged to everything that she could join, and was Grand Worthy Something-or-other in most of them. She pushed the idea of uniforms and rituals, for these things appeal naturally to folk whose lives are gray and uneventful. She had a uniformed Women’s Marching Club and a Flying Squadron with secret ritual which she used for political spy work.
All these things carried new dimensions to the lives of a class of colored women who had been hitherto bound chiefly to their kitchens and their churches. Woman’s “new sphere,” of which they had read something in the papers, had hitherto meant little to them. They were still under the spell of the old housework, except as they raised money in the churches. Here was work newer and more interesting than church work. The colored ministers protested, but were afraid to protest too much, because many of Sara’s political followers were still their best church workers, and they dared not say or do too much to alienate them.
Sara worked feverishly during March because she knew perfectly well that the real difficulty lay ahead. The election of Matthew might involve voting not only against Sammy’s machine but against the Republican ticket and with the Farmer-Labor group, and possibly even voting with the Democrats. Casual white outsiders cannot understand what this problem is. These colored women were born Republicans, even more than their fathers and brothers, because they knew less of the practical action of politics. Republicanism was as much a part of their heritage as Methodism or the rites of baptism. They were enthusiastic to have a colored man nominated by the Republican Party. But could she so organize and concentrate that enthusiasm that it would carry these women over into the camp of hereditary political and economic enemies?
They looked upon the white labor unions as open enemies because the stronger and better-organized white unions deliberately excluded Negroes. The whole economic history of the Negro in Chicago was a fight for bread against white labor unions. Only in the newer unions just organized chiefly among ​the foreign-born—and fighting for breath among the unskilled or semi-skilled laborers—only here were colored people welcomed, because they had to be. Of course, the very name of the Democratic Party was anathema to black folk. It stood for slavery and disfranchisement and “Jim Crow” cars. Well, Sara knew that she had a desperate task, and she was fighting hard.
She was in touch with the labor unions and soon sensed their right and left wings. The right wing was easy to understand. They were playing her game and compromising here and there to obtain certain selfish advantages. Sara was sure she could take care of them. The extreme left group was more difficult to understand. She did not know what it was they really wanted, but she quickly sensed that they had astute leadership. The international president of the Box-Makers, who lived in New York, was evidently well educated and keen. Sara had written her in the hope of avoiding contact with the local union. Her answers showed her a desperately earnest woman. Sara did everything to induce her by letter to wield her Chicago influence for Matthew, but so far had seen no signs of success. This left group was meantime clamoring, pushing their claims and asking promises and making inconvenient suggestions. So far Sara had avoided meeting them.
One thing, one very little thing, Sara kept in her mind’s eye, and that was Doolittle and his health. If anything happened to Doolittle before the primary election—well, if it happened, Sara wanted to know it and to know it first.
And it was precisely here that Sammy made his second mistake. He calculated that the news of any change in Doolittle’s health would reach him first, because Doolittle’s valet was a staunch member of his machine. Indeed, he got him the job. Now Sara knew this as well as Sammy, and she worked accordingly. Doolittle lived officially on the South Side but actually in Winnetka, away up on the North Shore, in a lovely great house overlooking the blue lake. Sara had careful and minute knowledge of his household. Of course, his servants were all colored. That was good politics. Sara again had recourse to that maid who had told her first of the plan to renominate Doolittle. She had the maid at tea on one of her Thursday “at homes,” and was careful to have in some of ​her most expensive friends—the doctor’s wife, the banker’s daughter, the niece of the vice president of Liberty Life.
Sara did not say that the quiet and well-behaved stranger was simply a maid, and by this very reticence tied the maid to her forever. Also, Sara pumped her assiduously about Doolittle’s health without directly asking after it. She easily learned that it was much more precarious than the public believed. Immediately, through the maid, Sara got in touch with the valet. She picked him up downtown in her car and brought him to luncheon one day, when Matthew was away from home.
“I do not want you to think, Mr. Amos, that I have anything against the excellent Mr. Doolittle.”
“No, ma’am, no, ma’am, I’m sure you ain’t. I am sorry he’s running again. He oughtn’t to done it. He ain’t in no fit condition to make a campaign. He wouldn’t of done it if he had been left alone; but there’s his wife full of ambition and the big bosses full of plans.”
“I do wish Sammy had stood pat and insisted on the nomination,” said Sara thoughtfully.
“I’ll never forgive him,” said Mr. Amos. “It was sheer lack of backbone and an itching palm.”
“You are a great friend of his, I know.”
“Well,” said Mr. Amos, “I don’t like him as well as I use to, although I know he got me my job. Tell you what, ma’am, I wish your husband could get the nomination.” They talked on. When finally he stood at the front door, Sara was saying:
“I hope, of course, that all will go well, for Doolittle is a deserving old man, but if anything should change in his physical condition I’d like to know it before anybody else, Mr. Amos; and I’m depending on you.” And her dependence was expressed in the shape of a yellow bill which she slipped in Mr. Amos’ hand. He took occasion to examine it under the electric light as he was waiting for the bus. It was a bank note for five hundred dollars. Mr. Amos missed two buses looking at it.
Less than a week later, while Sara was at her desk one morning, about to send out notes for one of her innumerable committee meetings, the telephone rang. The low voice of Mr. Amos came over it:
​“Mr. Doolittle has had an attack. He is quite ill.”
She thanked him softly and hung up.
The next morning Sara went down to Republican headquarters, where she used to be well known. She was regarded with considerable interest this morning, but remained unperturbed. She asked for a certain gentleman who was always busy, but Sara wrote a note and sent it in to him with a card. He found time to see her.
“Mr. Graham,” she said, “what do you think of Congressman Doolittle’s health?”
Mr. Graham looked at her sharply, took off his glasses, and polished them carefully, as he continued to look.
“I have every reason to suppose,” he said slowly, “that Mr. Doolittle’s health is excellent.”
“Well, it isn’t,” said Sara.
“I suppose your source of information—” But Sara interrupted him.
“Frankly, Mr. Graham—suppose that Congressman Doolittle should die before the primary election.”
“We'd be in a hell of a muddle,” blurted out Mr. Graham.
“You would,” said Sara. “You could hardly nominate Sammy, because Sammy is very unpopular just now among colored voters.”
“Thanks to you,” said Mr. Graham.
“No, Mr. Graham, thanks to you. Now my husband Mr. Matthew Towns, is both popular and—intelligent.”
“Especially,” added Mr. Graham, “with the Farmer-Labor reformers and the Bolsheviks.”
“Not a bad bunch of votes to bring to the Republican Party just now.”
“Well, any colored candidate would have to bring in something to offset the hullabaloo which the Klan would raise in this town if we nominated a Negro and a—one with your husband’s record, to Congress.”
“Precisely, and I am calculating that the support of the reform groups and the solidarity of the colored vote would much more than offset this and make the election certain.”
“In any case, Mrs. Towns, I take it that your husband has been promised the support of the Farmer-Labor group only on condition that he stand on their platform.”
​“He has given them to understand,” said Sara carefully, and with a smile, “that he sympathizes with their ideals.”
“Well,” said Mr. Graham crisply, “that puts him out of the running for the Republican nomination, even in the extremely unlikely event that Mr. Doolittle for any reason should not or could not receive it.”
“I wonder,” said Sara. “You know quite well that the intellectuals in the Farmer-Labor group are bound to support Republican policies up to a certain point. Their financial interests compel them; now it would be good politics for the Republicans to go a step beyond that point in order to attract, by some show of liberality, as large a group as possible of the liberals. Then, having split off their leaders and their thinkers, we might let the rest of the radicals go hang. What I am proposing in fine, Mr. Graham, is this: that the nomination of my husband (in the unlikely event that Mr. Doolittle should not be well enough to accept) might be a piece of farsighted politics on your part and bring you the bulk of the liberal vote, while at the same time paralyzing and splitting up the power of the radicals.”
Mr. Graham fingered his mustache.
“I will not forget this visit, Mrs. Towns,” he said.
Sara walked out; taking a taxi, she quietly slipped over to the Democratic headquarters. She asked to see Mr. Green of Washington.
“Mr. Green?” asked the porter, doubtfully.
“Yes, he is in town temporarily and making his headquarters here. I will not keep him long. Here is my card. I have met him.”
After a while another gentleman came out.
“Mr. Green is only calling at this office. Just what is your business with him?”
“Please tell him that once in Washington he signed a petition for me that helped release Matthew Towns from Joliet. Mr. Towns is my husband and is now running for Congress.”
A few minutes later Sara was closeted with Mr. Green, a high official of the Klan. He looked at her with interest.
“And what can I do for you this time, madam?”
“You remember me?”
“Perfectly.”
“I trust you have not regretted helping me.”
​“No.”
“Have you followed Mr. Towns’ career?”
“I know something of it.”
“Well, he may be nominated for Congress by the Republicans, and he may not. If he does not get the nomination, he will run independently on the Farmer-Labor ticket. Any help that the Democrats could give us in such a campaign would greatly impede the Republicans.”
Mr. Green smiled, but Sara proceeded:
“In the unlikely event that he should be nominated by the Republicans I have come to ask you if it would not be possible for you to restrain any anti-Negro campaign against him or any undue reference to his jail sentence. You see, with the Republican and Farmer-Labor support he would probably be elected, and if that election came with your silent help, he would be even more disposed to look with favor upon you and your help than he is now. And he feels now that he owes you a great deal.”
Mr. Green looked at her curiously. Finally, as he arose, he shook hands with her and said:
“I am glad you came to me.”
Sara was a little exhausted when she reached home, but she still had some letters to write. The maid said that the telephone had rung and that some Mr. Amos would call her later. Sara sat down by her well-ordered desk and inserted a new pen-point. Soon the telephone rang. Mr. Amos’ voice came over the wire:
“Mr. Doolittle is some better, but still in bed.”
Sara looked at the clock. It was four. She ordered dinner and went back to her writing. The hours passed slowly. At half-past five Matthew came in, and they ate silently at six. While they were eating the telephone rang again.
“Mr. Doolittle has gone out for a short drive. He is better, but far from well.”
They finished dinner. Matthew stood about restlessly a while, smoking. Then with a muttered word he went out. Sara sat down beside the telephone and waited. The messages came at intervals, each shorter than the other.
“Mr. Doolittle has returned.”
“He has taken a chill.”
“The physicians are working over him.”
​“He is sinking.”
Eight, nine, and ten o’clock chimed on Sara’s gilt desk clock, and then:
“Congressman Doolittle is dying.”
Sara waited no longer. It was March 20. The primary election was to take place April 8. She took a taxi for Republican headquarters.
XIX
Sammy’s campaign was progressing. Its progress was not altogether satisfactory, but Sammy was encouraged. Most of the best colored newspapers had been “seen” and were acting satisfactorily. The Conservator had one week a strong defense of the “Grand Old Man and Friend of Our Race, the Honorable Calvin Doolittle!” The next week, it featured a lynching, scored the Democrats, and pointed to Doolittle’s vote on the anti-lynching bill. The Lash, when Sara refused its last exorbitant demand for cash, started a series of scathing attacks on the white trade unions and accused them of being filled with “nigger-haters” and Catholics. Other smaller sheets followed suit, with regrets that Mr. Towns was being misled into opposition to the Republican leaders who had always been friends, etc. Only one paper, The Standard, stood strong for Matthew at a price which Sara could afford; but even that paper avoided all attacks on the Republican Party.
The local clubs and political centers of Sammy’s machine gave every evidence of prosperity, while police interference with gambling and prostitution ceased. The prohibition officials apparently stopped all efforts in the main black belt, and there were wild and ceaseless rumors that the Klan was back of a widespread effort to beat the Republicans.
Only the women stood strong. And so strong did they stand under Sara’s astute leadership and marshaling care that Sammy was still worried. They were difficult to reach. Sluggers could not break up their meetings. They could easily out-gossip Sammy’s sensation-mongers, and against their hold on the churches, the colored newspapers availed nothing. It remained true, therefore, after two months’ campaign, that the great majority of Negro voters were still apparently opposed to Sammy and strongly in favor of Matthew’s nomination. Nevertheless, with time and money, Sammy was sure he could ​win. The trouble was, time was pressing. Only two weeks was left before the primary elections.
Reflecting on all this, Sammy Scott after dinner one day took a stroll, smoking and greeting his friends. He dropped in at some of the clubs and had a word of advice or of information. He took drinks in a couple of cabarets; watched a little gambling. As he sat in one of the resorts, he listened to the talk of a young black radical. The fellow was explaining at length what Negroes ought to demand in Wages and conditions of labor, how they ought to get into the trade unions, and how they were welcomed by unions like that of the Box-Makers, Sammy sidled over to him. He struck Sammy as the sort of man who might carry on a useful propaganda among some of the colored voters and strengthen the demands made on Matthew to take so radical a position that the Republicans could not accept him.
Sammy talked with him and finally invited him to supper. He was undoubtedly hungry. Then he invited Sammy to come with him to a meeting of the Box-Makers. They went west to that great district where the black belt fades into the white workingmen’s belt. In a dingy crowded hall, a number of people were congregated. They were discussing the demands of the Box-Makers, and Sammy listened at the door.
“How many of us,” yelled one man, “make as much as fifteen dollars a week, and how can we live on that?”
“Yes,” added a woman, “how can we live, even if we women work too? We can make only five or six dollars, and out of work a third of the time.”
“Oh, you got it easy even at that. You ought to see where we work, down in damp and unventilated cellars. No porters to keep the shops and the washrooms clean; the stink and gloom and dirt all about us.”
“In my shop we never get sunlight a day in the year.”
Another one broke in. “And we're working twelve or thirteen hours a day with clean-up on Sunday. It ain’t human, and we won’t stand it no longer.”
Sammy edged in and sat down. Pretty soon the speakers gathered on the stage—the young colored man whom he had met, another colored man whom he did not at first recognize, and several white organizers and delegates. There were long Speeches and demands and fiery threats, but Sammy waited ​because he wanted to talk to that young fellow again. When the meeting was over, the young man came down accompanied by the other colored man, and Sammy noted with a start that it was the Indian with whom he had had conference concerning Matthew. Sammy was puzzled.
What was that Indian doing there on the stage? Especially when he represented aristocracy, at least if what he said about the Princess was to be believed. “Or is it that they are on to me?” thought Sammy. “Is the Princess interfering or not?” Then suddenly he saw a possibility. The Princess or her friends might want Matthew nominated for Congress, but nominated on this radical platform. Good, so did he. Oh, boy! So did he. He got hold of the young colored man and walked away. They had a long conversation about the platform of the radicals and about putting this platform up to Matthew Towns and insisting that he stand on it. Also, Sammy lent the young man twenty-five dollars and told him to come to see him again.
XX
It was late when Sammy got back to his office, after midnight, in fact. As he rushed in hurriedly he saw to his astonishment that Sara Towns was sitting in the outer room. A number of his cronies and henchmen were grouped about, staring, laughing, and smoking. Sara was elaborately ignoring them. She had arranged herself quite becomingly in the best chair with her trim legs in evidence, the light falling right for her costume and not too strongly on her face. The fact was that her face showed some recent signs of wear, despite the beauty parlors. Sammy stopped, swore softly under his breath, and glared. What did it mean? thought Sammy rapidly. Surrender or attack? But he quickly recovered his poise and soon was his smiling, debonair self.
“May I see you a few moments alone?” asked Sara.
“Sure! Excuse me, boys, ladies first.”
They went into the inner sanctum and drove out some more of Sammy’s lieutenants. Sara closed the door and looked around the inner office with disgust.
“My, but you’re dirty here!”
Sammy apologized. “It ain’t exactly as clean as it was in your day,” he grinned. She dusted a chair, arranged her skirt ​and tilted her hat properly, looking into the mirror opposite. Sammy waited and lighted another cigar.
“Sammy, I came to suggest that we join forces again.”
Sammy looked innocent, but did some quick calculations. Aha! he knew that combination wouldn’t last. Wonder what broke first?
“Well, I don’t know,” he drawled finally. “You broke it up yourself, you remember.”
“Yes, I did. You see, I thought at the time you were going to nominate Doolittle for congressman.”
“Yes,” said Sammy. “And I still am.”
“No, you’re not,” answered Sara. “He just died.”
Sammy dropped his cigar. He fumbled for it and got to his feet. Then he sat down again limply.
“Well, I'll be God damned,” he remarked and grabbed the telephone.
As a matter of fact, Sara had left the house and rushed to Republican headquarters before Doolittle was actually dead. Mr. Graham had, of course, been warned of Doolittle’s sudden illness, but he had not heard of his death for the simple reason that it had not yet taken place. When, therefore, this self-possessed, gray-eyed little woman came in and announced Doolittle’s death, Graham did not believe it. Five minutes later it was confirmed on the ’phone. But still the thing looked uncanny, because Sara had only been there five minutes and must have announced the death at exactly the minute it actually took place. But she had been quite matter-of-fact and had gone right to business.
“Can’t we get together?” she had said. “Under the circumstances you cannot nominate a white man now. You have no excuse for doing it after your past promises. Then, too, you can’t nominate Sammy Scott. He is too unpopular, thanks to you. Even if you try to nominate him, Matthew Towns can beat him in the primary. If you buy up the primary vote with a big slush fund, as Sammy plans, Towns, with the support of the Liberals and perhaps the Democrats, together with the bolting Negroes, can be elected.”
The chairman had sneered in his confusion: “Negroes don’t bolt.
"Not usually,” Sara replied, “but they may this time. In fact,” she said, “I think they will.”
​In his own mind the chairman was afraid she was right.
“Why not nominate Towns?” she asked.
“Well,” said the chairman, sparring for time, “first there is Sammy; and secondly, there is the question as to what Towns will do in Congress.”
“He will promise to do anything you say,” said Sara. “And I am going to see Sammy now.” Thus she came and told Sammy the news.
Sammy struggled at the ’phone. The operator was evidently asleep, but he got through to Graham at last. Sure enough, Doolittle was dead! Sammy stared into the instrument. It certainly looked bad for him. Here he had got the most important news of the campaign from headquarters through Sara. Very well. Evidently he must tie up with Sara again. In such an alliance he had everything to gain and nothing to lose, As his political partner, at least she could not continue to attack him. The matter of the nomination would not be settled until the primary was held in April. He had twelve days to work in. He had seen a president made in less time.
Sammy put down the telephone and turned to Sara with a smile, but underneath that smile was grim determination, and Sara, of course, knew it. He was going to fight to the last ditch, but he extended his hand with the most disarming of smiles.
“All right, partner,” he said, “we'll start again. Now what’s your plan?”
“My plan is,” said Sara coolly, “to have you work with me for the nomination of Matthew to Congress.”
“Where do I come in?” said Sammy.
“You come in at the head of a united machine with a large campaign fund.”
“That wasn’t the old plan,” said Sammy.
“No, it wasn’t,” answered Sara, “but who broke up the old plan?”
“Graham tried to,” said Sammy, “‘but God didn’t let him.”
“True,” answered Sara, “and naturally somebody has got to pay for not stopping Graham, and that somebody is you. Still,” she said, “the price need not be prohibitive. After Matthew has had a term in Congress, why not Sammy Scott?”
Sammy smiled wryly. “All right,” said Sammy. “I’m set. Now what are we going to do?”
​“We are going to try and get the Republican and the Farmer-Labor people to unite on the nomination of Matthew.”
“Good!” said Sammy. “Here goes.”
“Of course,” added Sara, “we must be careful not to make our new alliance too open and scare off the Liberals. We must drift together apparently as fast and no faster than these two wings come to an understanding. That understanding I’m going to engineer, and I want your help. First you go to Graham and tell him you’ll support Matthew. I’ve told him you’re coming. As soon as I’ve heard from him that you’ve seen him, I’ll get hold of Cadwalader and tell him the news. We’ll work on this toward a final conference just before the primaries.”
XXI
Neither to Sammy nor to Sara did their new alliance make any real difference. It healed the open and public split, but Sammy continued to bore into Matthew’s support, and Sara continued to strengthen his popularity and defenses. Beyond that, Sammy and Sara had always admired each other. Each was a little at a loss without the other. Neither had many intimate associates or confidants whom they wholly trusted. Both had the highest respect for each other’s abilities. They knew that their new alliance was a truce and not a union. Each suspected the other, and each knew the other’s suspicions. At the same time, they needed each other’s skill and they wanted desperately to confide in each other, as far as they dared.
Sara had suggested that just before the primaries, a conference of Republicans and Liberals might be held in order to come to a final understanding and unite on Matthew’s nomination. Sammy had to assent. He had plans of his own for this conference, which he hoped to make a last desperate effort at Matthew’s undoing. He knew just what kind of conference would best serve his ends, but he did not dare let Sara know what he wanted.
On one point Sara had of course made up her mind: no agreement between Matthew, Graham, and Cadwalader was going to depend on the chances of a single conference or even of several conferences. She was going to conduct secret negotiations with all parties, until the final conference should find them in such substantial agreement that definitive action would ​be easy; that is, all except the left-wing labor unions. The surer she became of the main groups, the less did Sara think of these common laborers and foreigners. They could come in at last, when agreement or protest would make little real difference.
Sara hoped that she might come to this agreement by mere verbal fencing. She hoped so, but she knew better. Sooner or later there must be a definite understanding with Graham. Very well, when the crisis came she would meet it.
With her mind then on this closing conference as merely the ratification of agreements practically made, Sara at first settled on something big and impressive: a church or hall mass meeting of all parties and interests, making an overwhelming demand for the election of Matthew Towns as congressman. Sammy listened, his head on one side, his cigar at an impressive angle, his feet elevated, perhaps a bit higher than usual; his coat laid aside.
“Um-um!” he nodded. “Fine; fine big thing. If it could be put over. Smashing publicity.” Then he took a long pull at his cigar and looked intently at the glowing end.
“Of course,” he said reflectively, “there is one thing: would Matthew make the right kind of speech?” Sammy was really afraid he would; Sara not only did not know whether or not Matthew would make the right kind of speech; she did not even know if he would try. In fact, he might deliberately make the wrong kind of speech, even after agreement had already been reached. Sara’s doubt rested on the fact that she and Matthew had had a tilt this very morning, and she at least had had it out. She put the situation before him, frank and stark, with no bandying of words.
“Now see here. You have got this nomination in your hands and on a silver salver, if you want it. But in order to get it you’ve got to make the kind of statement that will satisfy the Republicans backed by big business, the Democrats backed by big business, and the Farmer-Labor party led by reformers and union labor. You’ve even got to cater to the radical wing of the trade unions. It will mean straddling and twisting and some careful lying. It will mean promises which it is up to you to fulfill after election, if you want to, and to break if you want to—after election. It will mean half promises and double words and silences to make people think what you are ​going to do, what you are not going to do, or what you do not know whether you are going to do or not. Unless you do something like this you will lose the nomination.
“Or, what’s just as bad, you will lose the Republican nomination. Perhaps you have kidded yourself into thinking that you can make a winning fight with the Farmer-Labor nomination and the independent Negro vote. Well, listen to me. You can’t. There isn’t such a thing as an independent Negro vote. Or at any rate it is so small as to be negligible. The Negroes are going to fight and yell before election. At the election they are going to trot to the polls and vote the Republican ticket like good darkies. If you want to go to Congress, you have got to get the Republican nomination.
“On the other hand, nothing will clinch this nomination, the election, and the whole-hearted future support of the Republican machine like your ability to poll not simply the Republican vote, but the Farmer-Labor vote and the vote of the independent Democrats and at least a part of the radical vote. You can do this if you don’t act like a fool.”
Matthew had pushed his breakfast aside and looked out of the window. He saw a few trees and the gray apartment houses beyond. Above lay the leaden sky.
“Suppose,” he said, “that instead of making this campaign, I should ask for the part of the money we have made which is mine and give up this game?” Sara’s little mouth settled into straight, thin lines. “You wouldn’t get it,” she said, “because it doesn’t belong to you. You didn’t earn it; I did. You haven’t saved any. You have squandered money, even recently; I don’t know what for, and I don’t care. But I have drawn out all the money in our joint account and put it in my own account. Everything we have got stands in my name, and it is going, to stand there until you get into Congress. And that’s that.”
Matthew had looked at Sara solemnly with brooding eyes. She was always uncomfortable when he looked at her like that. He seemed to be quite impersonal, as though he were entering lone realms where she could not follow. Soon, some of her assurance had fallen away and her language became less precise:
“Well, what’s the idea? What ya glaring at? D’ye think I am going to fail or let you fail after climbing all this distance?”
​Apparently he had not heard her. He seemed to be judging her in a far-off sort of way. He was thinking. In a sense Sara was an artist. But she failed in greatness because she lacked the human element, the human sympathy. Now if she had had the abandon, that inner comprehension, of the prostitute who once lived opposite Perigua—but no, no, Sara was respectable. That meant she was a little below average. She was desperately aware of the prevailing judgment of the people about her, She would never be great. She would always be, to him—unendurable. He got up suddenly and silently and walked three miles in the rain. He ended up at his own lodging with its dust and gloom and stood there in the cold and damp thinking of his marriage, six months—six centuries ago.
Again and for a second, for a third, time in his life, he was caught in the iron of circumstance. And he wasn’t going to do anything. He couldn’t do anything. He was going to be the victim, the sacrifice. Although this time it seemed different from the others. In the first case, of the wreck, he had saved his pride. In the second, the nomination to the legislature, he had sold his body but ransomed his soul, as he hoped, But this time, pride, soul, and body were going.
He looked about at these little trappings of the spirit within him that had grown so thin: gold of the Chinese rug, beneath its dim Chicago dirt; the flame of a genuine Matisse. He had never given up the old rooms of his in the slums, chiefly because Sara would not have the things he had accumulated there in her new and shining house; and he hated to throw them all away. He had always meant to go down and sort them out and store the few things he wanted to keep. But he had been too busy. The rent was nominal, and he had locked the door and left things there.
Only now and then in desperation he went there and sat in the dust and gloom. Today, he went down and waded in. He sat down in the old, shabby easy-chair and thought things out. He was, despite all, more normal and clearer-minded than when he came here out of jail. He was not so cynical. He had found good friends—humble everyday workers, even idlers and loafers whom he trusted and who trusted him. Life was not all evil. He did not need to sell his soul entirely to the devil for bread and butter. Life could be even interesting. There ​were big jobs, not to be done, but to be attempted, to be interested in. He was not yet prepared to let Sara spoil everything. He began to look upon her with a certain aversion and horror. He planned to live his life by himself as much as possible. She had her virtues, but she was too hard, too selfish, too utterly unscrupulous.
He searched his pockets for money. He went downtown and paid two hundred dollars for a Turkish rug for the bedroom—a silken thing of dark, soft, warm coloring. He lugged it home on the street car and threw it before his old bed and let it vie with the dusky gold of its Chinese mate. He had searched for another Matisse and could not find one, but he had found a copy of a Picasso—a wild, unintelligible, intriguing thing of gray and yellow and black. He paid a hundred dollars for it and hung it on another empty wall. He was half-consciously trying to counteract the ugliness of the congressional campaign.
Long hours he sat in his room. There was no place in Sara’s house—it was always Sara’s house in his thought—for anything of this, for anything of his: for this big, shabby armchair that put its old worn arms so sympathetically about him. For his pipe. For the books that his fingers had made dirty and torn and dog-eared by reading. For the pamphlets that would not stand straight or regular or in rows. He sat there cold and dark until three o’clock in the morning. Then he stood up suddenly and went to a low bootlegger’s dive, a place warm with the stench of human bodies. He sought there feverishly until he found what he wanted—a soul to talk with. There was a mason and builder who came there usually at that hour, especially when he was half drunk and out of work. He was a rare and delicate soul with a whimsical cynicism, with easily remembered tales of lost and undiscovered bits of humanity, with exquisite humor. He played the violin like an angel. Matthew found him. He sat there until dawn. He ordered him to build a fireplace and bathroom in his apartment—something beautiful.
As he sat silently listening to the luscious thrill of the “Spanish Fandango” he determined to do one thing: he would resign from the legislature. Then if he failed in the nomination to Congress, he would be left on the road to freedom. If he gained the nomination, he would gain it with that much less ​deception and double-crossing. Of course Sara would be furious, Well, what of that?
At daybreak he went back to his rooms and started cleaning up. He swept and dusted, cleaned windows, polished furniture. He sweated and toiled, then stopped and marveled about Dirt. Its accumulation, its persistence was astonishing. How could one attack it? Was it a world symptom? Could machines abolish it, or only human weariness and nausea?
Late in the afternoon he went out and bought a new big bed with springs and a soft mattress, a bath robe, pajamas, and sheets and some crimson hangings. He hid in the wall some of his money which remained. He knew what he was doing; he was surrendering to Sara and the Devil and soothing his bruised soul by physical work and the preparation of a retreat where he would spend more and more of his time. He would save and hide and hoard and some day walk away and leave everything. But he wrote and mailed his resignation as member of the legislature. That at least was a symbolic step.
From her interview with Matthew, Sara emerged shaken but grim. She had no idea what Matthew was going to do. She had put the screws upon him more ruthlessly than she had ever dared before. She had cut off his money, his guiding dream of a comfortable little fortune. She had told him definitely what he had to think and promise, and he had silently got up and gone his way. Suppose he never came back, or suppose he came back and eventually went to this final conference and “spilled the beans”; threw everything up and over and left her shamed and prostrate before black and white Chicago? No, she couldn’t risk a mass meeting.
“No,” she said in answer to Sammy’s query, and looked at him with a frankness that Sammy half suspected was too frank. “I don’t know what Matthew is going to say or do. And I am afraid we can’t risk a mass meeting.”
Sammy was silent. Then he said:
“That resignation was a damn shrewd move.”
Sara glanced up.
“What—” She started to ask “What resignation?” but she paused. “What,—do you think will be its effect?” She would not let Sammy dream she did not know what he was talking about.
“Well—it’ll mollify the boys. Give me a chance to run Cor​ruthers in at a special election—convince the bosses that Towns is playing square."
Sara was angry but silent. So that fool had resigned from the legislature! Surrendered a sure thing for a chance. Did the idiot think he was already elected to Congress, or was he going to quit entirely?
She took up the morning Tribune to hide her agitation and saw the editorial—"a wise move on the part of Towns and shows his independence of the machine."
Sara laid down the paper carefully and thought–tapping her teeth with her pencil. Was it possible that after all—Then she came back to the matter in hand. Sammy would have liked to suggest a real political conference: a secret room with guarded door; cigars and liquor; a dozen men with power and decision, and then, give and take, keen-eyed sparring, measuring of men, and—careful compromise. Out of a conference like that anything might emerge, and Sammy couldn't lose entirely.
But he saw that Sara had the social bee in her head. She wanted a reception, a luncheon, or a dinner. Something that would celebrate a conclusion rather than come to it. He was not averse to this, because he was convinced it would be disastrous to Sara. No social affair of whites and Negroes could come to any real conclusion. It could only celebrate deals already made. Sammy meant to block such deals. But he didn't suggest anything; he let Sara do that, and Sara did. After profound thought, and still clicking her pencil on her teeth, she said:
"A meeting at my home would be the best. A small and intimate thing. A luncheon. No, a dinner, and a good dinner. Let's see, we'll have—"
And then Sara and Sammy selected the personnel. On this they quite agreed. If all went well, Sara suggested that the mass meeting might follow. Sammy cheerfully agreed—if all went well.
Immediately Sara began to prepare for this conference. First she made a number of personal visits, just frank little informal talks with Mr. Graham, with Mr. Cadwalader, with Mrs. Beech and others. Mr. Cadwalader and Mrs. Beech both began by congratulating Sara on Matthew's resignation from the legislature.
​“Statesmanlike!” said Cadwalader. “It proves to our people that the reported understanding between him and Scott is untrue.”
“Very shrewd,” said Mrs. Beech, “to make this open declaration of independence.”
“He often takes my advice,” said Sara with a cryptic smile, and she explained that when Sammy had approached her, offering codperation after Doolittle’s death, they had, of course, to accept—“to a degree and within limits.”
“Of course, of course!” it was agreed.
By her visits she got acquainted with these leaders, measured their wishes, and succeeded fairly well in making them interested in her. She let them do as much talking as possible but also talked herself, clearly and with as much frankness as she dared. She was trying to find out just what the Republicans wanted and just what the reformers demanded.
From time to time she wrote these things down and put the formulas and statements before Matthew, writing them out carefully and precisely in her perfect typewriting. He received them silently and took them away, making no comment. Only once was the resignation from the legislature referred to:
“I’m glad you took my hint about the legislature,” said Sara sweetly, one night at dinner.
Matthew stared. When had she hinted, and what?
Sara proceeded further with her plans. She put before Mr. Graham a suggested platform which contained a good many of the Republican demands but even more of the Progressive demands. Mr. Graham immediately rejected it as she expected. He pointed out just how much more he must have and what things he could under no circumstances admit.
Sara tried the same method with Mr. Cadwalader; only in his case she submitted a platform with less of the Progressive demands and more of the Republican. She had more success with him. She could easily see that Mr. Cadwalader after all really leaned considerably toward Republican policies and was Progressive in theory and by the practical necessity of yielding something to the Labor group. But the question Sara quickly saw was, Which Labor group? There were, for instance, the aristocrats in the Labor world; the skilled trade unions connected with the American Federation of Labor; and on the other hand, there was the left wing, the Communist radicals, ​and there was a string of uncommitted workers between. Mr. Cadwalader consulted the conservative labor unionists and evolved a platform which was not so far from Sara's, and indeed as she compared them, Mr. Graham and Mr. Cadwalader seemed easily reconcilable, at least in words. Sara tried again and brought another modified platform to Mr. Graham. Mr. Graham read it and smiled. So far as words went, there was really little to object to, but he laid it aside and looked Sara squarely in the eye, and Sara looked just as squarely at him. It had come to a showdown, and both knew it. Sara attempted no further fencing. She simply said:
"What is it specifically that you want Matthew to do in Congress? Write it out, and I'll see that he signs it."
He took a piece of paper and wrote a short statement. It had reference to specific bills to be introduced in the next Congress, on the tariff, on farm relief, on railroad consolidation, and on super-power. He even named the persons who were going to introduce the bills. Then he handed the slip to Sara. She read it over carefully, folded it up, and put it in her bag.
"You'll receive this, signed, at or before the final conference."
"Before will be better," suggested Mr. Graham.
"Perhaps," answered Sara, "but on the night of the conference it will be time enough."
Mr. Graham looked almost genial. Sara was the kind of politician that he liked, especially as he saw at present no way to escape a colored candidate, and on the whole he preferred Matthew Towns to Sammy Scott.
"But how about the Radical wing?" he asked. "Are they going to accept this platform?"
"That is the point," said Sara. "I am trying to make the platform broad enough to attract the bulk of the Labor group, but I have not consulted the radicals yet. If they accept what I offer, all right; but even if they do not, we have made sure of the majority of the third party's support."
In this way and by several consultations with Mr. Cadwalader, Mrs. Beech, and their friends, Sara evolved a statement which seemed fair, especially when most of the persons involved began to realize that Matthew Towns on this platform was pretty sure of election.
Sara then turned to the Labor group. Mr. Cadwalader had ​smoothed the way for her to meet the labor-union heads, and it took Sara but a short time to learn how the land lay there. Eight-hour laws, and anti-injunction legislation, of course; but above all "down with Negro scabs"! Negroes should be taught never to take white strikers' jobs.
"Even if white unions bar them before and after the strike," thought Sara. But she did not say so. She agreed that scabbing was reprehensible, and in turn the union leaders unctuously asserted the "principle" of no color line in the Federation of Labor. It was quite a love feast, and both Sara and Mr. Cadwalader were elated.
Then Sara finally plucked up courage and visited the headquarters of the left-wing trade unionists. She had anticipated some unpleasantness, and she was not disappointed. Her earlier contact with the group had been by letter, and she had been impressed by the shrewd leadership and evidence of wide vision. She was prepared for careful mental gymnastics and careful play of word and phrase. Instead she found a rough group of painfully frank folk. The surroundings were dirty, and the people were rude. It was much less attractive than her visits to the well-furnished headquarters of the Republicans or to the rooms of the Woman's City Club. But if Sara was disgusted with the people and surroundings, she was even more put out with their demands. They came out flat-footed and assumed facts that were puzzling. She did not altogether understand them, chiefly because she had not taken time to study them; it was words and personalities that she had come to probe. The flat demands therefore seemed to her outrageous, revolutionary.
"Overthrow capital? What do you mean?" she said. "Do you want to stop industry entirely and go back to barbarism?"
Then all talked at once in that little crowded room, and she did not pretend to understand:
"What's Towns going to do for municipal ownership of public services? For raising the income taxes on millionaires? For regulating and seizing the railroads? For curbing labor injunctions? For confiscating the unearned increment? For abolishing private ownership of capital?"
Sara stared; then she gathered up her papers.
"I shall have to ask Mr. Towns," she said, crisply. "We will have another consultation next week." And she swept out, ​vowing to have nothing to do with this gang again. She told Sammy about it and suggested that he hold all further consultations with them.
"It is no place for a lady," she said.
"Lots of them down there," said Sammy.
"You mean those working-women?" said Sara with disgust.
It suited Sammy very well to take charge of further conferences with the Laborites. He had already been engaged in stiffening the demands of the Republicans on the one hand and arousing the suspicion of the colored voters against the trade unionists on the other: and now he was more than willing to push the left wing toward extreme demands. He worked through his young radical friend and now and then saw and talked with the Indian.
Sara was quite sure that he would do something like this, but she did not care. The more radical the left wing was, the fewer votes it would poll and the stronger would be Matthew's hold upon the main bloc of the Progressive group. She was sure of Graham unless Matthew got crazy and went radical. And Matthew seemed to be obeying the whip and bit.
It seemed to Sara the proper time to put Graham's ultimatum before Matthew. She did not argue or expatiate; she simply handed him the statement with the remark:
"Mr. Graham expects to receive this, signed by you, at the conference or before. Your nomination depends upon it."
Then she powdered her nose, put on her things, patted her hat in shape, and walked out. Matthew walked up and down the room. Up and down, up and down, until the walls were too narrow. Then he went out and walked in the streets. It was the last demand, and it was the demand that left him no shred of self-respect. What crazed him was the fact that he knew that he was going to sign it, and that in addition to this, he was going to promise to the Progressives, and perhaps even to the left-wing Laborites, almost exactly opposite and contradictory things. He had reached his nadir. Then he held up his head fiercely. From nadir he would climb! But even as he muttered this half aloud, he did not believe it. From such depths men did not climb. They wallowed there.
Finally, about April first, a week before the primary election, Sara decided that it was time for her final conference. She gave up entirely the idea of a mass meeting. That could come ​after the primary, when Matthew’s nomination was accomplished.
What she really wanted was a dinner conference. There again she hesitated. She was afraid that some of the people whom she was determined to have present, some of the high-placed white folk, might hesitate to accept an invitation to dinner in a colored home. Gradually she evolved something else; a small number of prominent persons were invited to confer personally with Mr. Towns at his home. After the conference, “supper would be served.” Sara put this last. If any one felt that they must, for inner or outer compulsions, leave after the conference, they could then withdraw; but Sara proposed to keep them so long and to make the dinner-supper so attractive that it would be, in fact, quite an unusual social occasion. “Quite informal” it was to be, so her written invitations on heavy paper said. But that was not the voice of her dining-room.
XXII
Sara looked across that dining-room and was content. The lace over-cover was very beautiful. The new china had really an exquisite design, and her taste in cut glass was quite vindicated. The flowers were gorgeous. She would have preferred Toles, the expensive white caterer, but, of course, political considerations put that beyond thought. The colored man, Jones, was, after all, not bad and had quite a select white clientele in Chicago. It was a rainy night, but so far not one person invited had declined, and she viewed the scene complacently. She doubted very much if there was another dining-room in Chicago that looked as expensive. Bigger, yes, but not more expensive, in looks at least.
Sara was in no sense evil. Her character had been hardened and sharpened by all that she had met and fought. She craved wealth and position. She got pleasure in having people look with envious eyes upon what she had and did. It was her answer to the world’s taunts, jibes, and discriminations. She was always unconsciously showing off, and her nerves quivered if what she did was not noticed. Really, down in her heart, she was sorry for Matthew. He seemed curiously weak and sensitive in the places where he should not have been; she herself was furious if sympathy or sorrow seeped through her armor. ​She was ashamed of it. All sympathy, all yielding, all softness, filled her with shame. She hardened herself against it. Tonight she looked upon as a step in her great triumph.
There were twenty people in all besides Matthew and Sara. Of these, six were white. There was Mr. Graham, the Republican city boss, and with him a prominent banker and a high state official; Mrs. Beech, the president of the Woman’s City Club, was there, and a settlement worker from the stockyard district; and, of course, Mr. Cadwalader. Sara regarded the banker and the president of the City Club as distinct social triumphs for herself. It was something unique in colored Chicago. And especially on a cold and rainy night like this!
Besides these there were fourteen colored persons. First, Sammy and Corruthers. Sara had violently objected to the thin, red-headed and freckled Corruthers, but Sammy solemnly engaged to see that he arrived and departed sober and that he was kept in the background. He made up for this insistence by bringing two of his most intelligent ward leaders with their wives, who were young and pretty, although not particularly talkative, having, in truth, nothing to say. Sara had insisted upon the physician and his wife from Memphis and the minister and his wife. All of these were college-trained and used to social functions. Two colored editors had to be included, and two colored women representing Sara’s clubs.
The president of the Trade Unions’ City Central was at first included among the guests, but when he heard that the meeting was to be at a colored home and include a supper, he reneged. Mr. Murphy habitually ate with his knife and in his shirt sleeves and he didn’t propose “to have no niggers puttin’ on airs over him.” At the same time the unions must be represented; so the settlement worker was chosen at Mrs. Beech’s suggestion.
Sammy had pointed out rather perfunctorily that it might be a mistake not to include some radicals and that in any event they might send a delegation if they heard of the conference. Sara merely shrugged her shoulders, but Sammy saw to it that the left-wing unions did hear of the conference and of their exclusion.
The stage was set deftly in the large reception room opening in front on the glass-enclosed veranda. There was a little orchestra concealed here behind the ferns, and it was to play ​now and then while the company was gathering and afterward while they were eating. There were cigarettes and punch, and as Mr. Corruthers soon discovered, there were two kinds of punch. In the main reception room were soft chairs and a big couch, while thick portières closed off the dining-room and the entrance hall. To the right was the door to the little library, and here Matthew held his interviews, the door standing ajar.
Matthew sat beside a little table in a straight chair. There were pens, blotters, and writing materials, and all over, soft reflected lights. Sara and Sammy had general charge, and both were in their element. The company gathered rather promptly. Sara stood in the main parlor before the portières that veiled the dining-room, where she could receive the guests, entertain them, and send them to consultation with Matthew. Sammy stood between the hall and the reception room where he could welcome the guests, overlook the assembly, and keep his eye on Corruthers.
Everybody was overanxious to please, but the difficulties were enormous. There was no common center of small talk to unite black and white, educated and self-made. The current tittle-tattle of the physician’s and minister’s wives was not only Greek to the banker and the president of the City Club, but not at all clear to the wives of the colored politicians. The conversation between Mr. Cadwalader and the Republican bosses was a bit forced. Perhaps only in the case of the intelligent white settlement worker and the colored representatives of the Women’s Clubs was a new, purely delightful field of common interest discovered.
In Chicago as elsewhere, between white and colored, the obvious common ground was the Negro problem, and this both parties tried desperately to avoid and yet could not. They were always veering toward it. The editor and the banker sought to compare their respective conceptions of finance. But they never really got within understanding distance. Even Sara was at times out of her depth, in a serious definite conversation. With a particular person whom she knew or had measured she could shine. But the light and easy guidance of varied conversation in an assembly of such elements as these was rather beyond her. She hurried here and there, making a very complete and pleasing figure in her flesh-colored chiffon evening frock. But she was not quite at ease.
​Sammy’s finesse helped to save the day, or rather the night. He had real humor of a kindly sort, and shrewd knowledge of practically everybody present. He supplied the light, frank touch. He subtly separated, grouped, entertained, and reseparated the individuals with rare psychology. He really did his best, and with as little selfishness as he was capable of showing.
The Republican boss, the banker, and the state official were among the earliest arrivals. They sat down with Matthew and entered into earnest conversation. Evidently, they were reading over the latest draft of the proposed platform. Sara was taut and nervous. She tried not to listen, but she could not help watching. She saw Matthew shift the papers until he exposed one that lay at the bottom. The two gentlemen read it and smiled. Quite carelessly and after continued conversation, Mr. Graham absently put the paper in his pocket. By and by they arose and mingled with the other guests. They were all smiling. The boss whispered to Sara that he was satisfied, perfectly satisfied. She knew Matthew had signed the paper.
Sara was radiant. She personally escorted the banker to a seat beside the president of the City Club. She did not know that these two were particularly uncongenial, but they were both well-bred and kept up polite conversation until Mrs. Beech excused herself to talk with Matthew. Matthew was a figure distraught and absent-minded. His dress was much too negligent and careless to suit Sara, although he had put on his dinner jacket. Still, as Sara looked him over now and then, he did not make an altogether bad appearance. There was a certain inherent polish, an evidence of breeding which Sara always recognized with keen delight. It seemed easily to rise to the surface on occasions of this sort. Mr. Cadwalader and Mrs. Beech were now talking with Matthew. They seemed at first a little disturbed, but Sara was pleased to note that Matthew had aroused himself and was talking rather quickly and nervously but impressively. Evidently the two representatives of the liberal groups liked what he said. They called in the settlement worker. When at last they arose, all of them seemed pleased.
“I think,” said the president of the City Club, “we have come to a good understanding.”
​“Really,” said Mr. Cadwalader, “much better than I had hoped for. You can count on us.”
Sara sighed. The thing was done. Of course, there was the difficulty of those radical Labor people, but these she regarded as on the whole the least difficult of the three groups. She would perhaps approach them again tomorrow. Even if she failed they could not do much harm now.
Sammy had about given up. It looked as though Matthew was going to be triumphantly nominated. In fact, he had just learned that Matthew had made one unexpected move, and whether it was stupid or astute, Sammy was undecided. Corruthers had told him that during that very afternoon the left-wing Labor people had got at Matthew and told him that they had not been included in the negotiations after that first visit of Sara, and that none of their representatives were invited to the conference tonight. Matthew had been closeted with them a couple of hours, but just what was said or done Sammy was unable to learn. Apparently his henchman, the young colored radical, was not present, and he could not find the Indian. His hope then that the radicals would burst in on this conference and make trouble at the last moment seemed groundless. Perhaps Matthew by some hocus-pocus had secured their silent assent. The Labor delegation would probably not arrive at all.
Meantime, this conference must get on. If success was sure, he must be in the band wagon. He gradually gathered his colored politicians out into the dining-room, where there was good liquor. He got the white women and the colored women on the porch in earnest conversation on settlement work for the South Side. The younger women and men, including the Republican boss and his friends, he brought together in the main reception room and started some sprightly conversation. All this was done while Sara had been arranging carefully and not too obviously the personal conferences with Matthew. Well, it was all over.
Then he noticed Corruthers beckoning to him furtively from the half-raised portières that led to the hall. He looked about. Various members of the colored group were talking with the whites, and Matthew had emerged from the little library and seemed to be having a pleasant chat with the minister. Sammy slipped out.
​“Say,” said Corruthers, “that Labor delegation is here and they want to come in.”
Sammy pricked up his ears.
Aha! It looked as though something might happen after all. He walked over to Sara and imparted his news.
“Well, they are not coming in here,” said Sara.
“But,” expostulated Sammy, “they have evidently been invited.”
“Not by me,” snapped Sara.
“But I suspect by Matthew. He was with them this afternoon.”
Sara started and tapped her foot impatiently. But Sammy went on:
“Don’t you think it would be good politics to let them have their say? We don’t need to yield to them in any way.”
Sara was unwilling, but she saw the point. It was a shame to have this love feast broken into. Then a plan occurred to her. They need not come in here; they could meet Matthew in the little library. The door to the reception room could be closed, and they could enter from the hall. Meantime, Sammy saw Corruthers again beckoning excitedly from the door. He walked over quickly, and Corruthers whispered to him.
“My God!” said Sammy. “Hush, Corruthers, and don’t say another word. Here, come and have a drink!”
Then he hurried back to Sara. Sara interrupted him before he could speak.
“Take them into the library. I will have Matthew receive them.” She sauntered over to Matthew. “Matthew, dear, some of the Bolsheviks are here and want to talk to you. I have had them taken from the hall directly to the library. You can close the door. They will probably feel more at ease then.”
Matthew rose and said a little impatiently: “Why not have them in here?”
“They preferred the smaller room,” said Sara. “They are not exactly—dressed for an evening function.”
And then, turning, she ordered the portières which concealed the dining-room to be thrown open, and as Matthew stepped into the small library, the blaze of Sara’s supper fell upon the company in the reception room.
The table was a goodly sight. The waiters were deft and ​silent. The music rose sweetly. The company was hungry, for it was nearly nine. Even Mrs. Beech, who had meant to dine in Hubbard Woods, changed her mind. Little tables with lace, linen, China, and silver were set about, and soon a regular dinner of excellent quality was being served. Tongues loosened, laughter rose, and a feeling of good fellowship began to radiate. Mr. Cadwalader and Mrs. Beech agreed sotto voce that really this was quite average in breeding and as a spectacle; they glowed at the rainbow of skins—it was positively exciting.
Sammy was almost hilarious. He could not restrain a wink at Corruthers, and both of them simultaneously bolted for the hall in order to laugh freely and get some more of that other punch. Meantime, Sara’s unease increased. Her place and Matthew’s had been arranged at the edge of the dining-room at a table with Mrs. Beech and Mr. Graham. The banker, the state official, and the two pretty young politicians’ wives were at a table next, and the other tables were arranged as far as possible with at least one bit of color.
But where was Matthew? thought Sara impatiently. It was time for the toast and the great announcement—the culmination of the feast and conference. Mrs. Beech asked for Mr. Towns.
“He’s having a last word with the Communists,” laughed Sara.
“Oh, are they here?” asked Mr. Cadwalader uneasily—“at the last moment?”
“They wouldn’t come in—they are asking about some minor matters of adjustment, I presume.”
But Sara knew she must interfere. She distrusted Matthew’s mushy indecision. To reopen the argument now might spoil all. She could stand it no longer. She arose easily, a delicate coffee cup in hand, and said a laughing word. She moved to the library door. Sammy watched her. The others sensed in different ways some slight uneasiness in the air.
“Well, Mr. Towns,” said Sara, pushing the door wide, “we—”
The light of the greater room poured into the lesser—searching out its shadows. The ugly Chinese god grinned in the corner, and a blue rug glowed on the floor. In the center two figures, twined as one, in close and quivering embrace, leapt, etched in startling outline, on the light.
XXIII
Matthew had turned and started for the library. He had glanced at the reception room. He would not have been human not to be impressed. He was going to be a member of the Congress of the United States. He was going to be the first Negro congressman since the war. No—really the first; all those earlier ones had been exceptions. He was real power. Power and money. Sara should not fool him this time. He understood her. He would have his own funds. He would, of course, follow the machine. He must keep power and get money. But he would have someindependence—more and more as time flew. Until—He squared his shoulders, opened the door, and closed it behind him. The room was dimly lighted save the circle under the reading-light on the table. He looked about. No one was there. But there were voices in the hall. He waited.
Then slowly shame overwhelmed him. He was paying a price for power and money. A great, a terrible price. He was lying, cheating, stealing. He was fooling these poor, driven slaves of industry. He had listened to their arguments all this afternoon. He had meant now to meet the delegation brusquely and tell them railingly that they were idiots, that he could do little—something he’d try, but first he must get into Congress.
But he couldn’t find the words. He walked slowly over to the table and stood facing the door. It was all done. It was all over. He had sold his soul to the Devil, but this time he had sold it for something. Power? Money? Nonsense! He had sold it for beauty; for ideal beauty, fitness and curve and line; harmony and the words of the wise spoken long ago. He stood in his dinner jacket, sleek but careless, his shirt front rumpled,the satin of his lapel flicked with ash, his eyes tired and red, his hair untidy. He stood and looked at the door. The door opened; he dropped his eyes. He could not look up. He heard not the clumping tramp of a delegation, but the light step of a single person. He almost knew that it was the national president of the Box-Makers, come to make their last appeal. Somehow he had a desperate desire to defend himself before the merciless logic and wide knowledge of this official whom he had never met. She had never even written or answered his letters directly, but only through that dumpy stupid state president. She was to have been present this afternoon. She ​was not; only her pitiless written arraignment of his platform had been read. He had expected her tonight when he heard the delegation had arrived. But he could not look up. He simply took the paper which was handed to him, sensing the dark veil-like garments and the small hand in its cheap cotton glove. He took the paper which the woman handed him. On it was written:
“Our labor union, in return for its support, asks if you will publicly promise them that on every occasion you will cast your vote in Congress for the interests of the poor man, the employee, and the worker, whenever and wherever these interests are opposed to the interests of the rich,the employer, and the capitalist. For instance—”
Thus the paper began, and Matthew began slowly to read it. It was an absurd request. Matthew almost laughed aloud. He had thought to carry it off with a high hand, to laugh at these oafs and jolly them, insisting that first he must get to Congress, and then, of course, he would do what he could, Naturally, he was with them. Was he not a son of generations of workers? Well, then, trust him. But they had not come to argue. They were asking him to sign another paper, and to sign on the line. They could never be trusted to keep such a pledge silent. No, they would publish it to the world. Ha, ha, ha! What ghastly nonsense all this lying was! He stopped and went back to the paper and began reading it again. Something was gripping at him. Some tremendous reminder, and then suddenly the letters started out from the page and burned his gaze, they flamed and spread before him. He saw the strong beauty of the great curves, the breadth and yet delicate up-lifting of the capitals, the long, sure sweep of the slurred links. Great God! That writing! He knew it as he knew his own face. His hand had started to his inner pocket—then he tried to whisper, hoarsely—
“Where—who wrote this? Who—” He looked up.
A dark figure stood by the table. An old dun-colored cloak flowed down upon her, and a veil lay across her head. Her thin dark hands, now bare and almost clawlike, gripped each other. They were colored hands. Quickly he stepped forward. And she came like a soft mist, unveiled and uncloaked before him. Always she seemed to come thus suddenly into his life. And yet perhaps it was he himself that supplied the surprise ​and sudden wonder. Perhaps in reality she had always come quite naturally to him, as she came now.
She was different, yet every difference emphasized something eternally marvelous. Her hair was cut short. All that long, cloudlike hair, the length and breadth of it, was gone; but still it nestled about her head like some halo. Her gown was loose, ill-fitting, straight; her hands, hard, wore no jewels, but were calloused, with broken nails. The small soft beauty of her face had become stronger and set in still lines. Only in the steadfast glory of her eyes showed unchanged the Princess. She watched him gravely as he searched her with his eyes; and then suddenly Matthew awoke.
Then suddenly the intolerable truth gripped him. He lifted his hands to heaven, stretched them to touch the width of the world, and swept her into his tight embrace. He caught her to him so fiercely that her little feet almost left the ground, and her arms curled around his neck as their lips met.
"Kautilya," he sobbed. "Princess of India."
"Matthew," she answered, in a small frightened whisper.
There was a silence as of a thousand years, a silence while again he found her lips and kept them, and his arms crept along the frail, long length of her body, and he cried as he whispered in her ears. Perhaps some murmur from the further rooms came to them, for suddenly they started apart. She would have said the things she had planned to say, but she did not. All the greater things were forgotten. She only said as he stared upon her with wild light in his eyes:
"I am changed."
And he answered:
"The Princess that I worshiped is become the working-woman whom I love. Life has beaten out the gold to this fine stuff." And then with hanging head he said: "But I, ah, I am unchanged. I am the same flying dust."
She walked toward him and put both hands upon his shoulders and said, "Flying dust, that is it. Flying dust that fills the heaven and turns the sunlight into jewels." And then suddenly she stood straight before him. "Matthew, Matthew!" she cried. "See, I came to save you! I came to save your soul from hell."
"Too late," he murmured. "I have sold it to the Devil."
​“Then at any price,” she cried in passion, “at any price, I will buy it back.”
“What shall we do—what can we do?” he whispered, troubled, in her hair.
“We must give up. We must tell all men the truth; we must go out of this Place of Death and this city of the Face of Fear, untrammeled and unbound, walking together hand in hand.”
And he cried, “Kautilya, darling!”
And she said, “Matthew, my Man!”
“Your body is Beauty, and Beauty is your Soul, and Soul and Body spell Freedom to my tortured groping life!” he whispered.
“Benediction—I have sought you, man of God, in the depths of hell, to bring your dead faith back to the stars; and now you are mine.”
And suddenly there was light.
And suddenly from Matthew dropped all the little hesitancies and cynicisms. The years of disbelief were not. The world was one woman and one cause. And with one arm almost lifting her as she strained toward him, they walked shoulder to shoulder out into that blinding light.
And as they walked there seemed to rise above the startled, puzzled guests some high and monstrous litany, staccato, with moaning monotones, bearing down upon their whisperings, exclamations, movements, words and cries, across the silver and crystal of the service:
“I will not have your nomination.”
(What does he mean—who is this woman?)
“I'd rather go to hell than to Congress.”
(Is the man mad?)
“I’m through with liars, thieves, and hypocrites.”
(This is insulting, shameless, scandalous!)
“The cause that was dead is alive again; the love that I lost is found!”
(A married man and a slut from the streets!)
“Have mercy, have mercy upon us!” whispered the woman.
The company surged to its feet with hiss and oath.
Sara, white to the lips, her hard-clenched hand crushing the fragile China to bits, walked slowly backward before them with blazing eyes.
​“I am free!” said Matthew.
The low voice of the Princess floated back again from the crimson curtains of the hall:
“Kyrie Eleison.”
The high voice of Sara, like the final fierce upthrusting of the Host, shrilled to a scream:
“You fool—you God-damned fool!”
XXIV
The hall door crashed. The stunned company stared, moved, and rushed hurriedly to get away, with scant formality of leave-taking. It was raining without, a cold wet sleet, but the beautiful apartment vomited its guests upon the sidewalk while taxis rushed to aid.
The president of the Woman’s City Club rushed out the door with flushed face.
“These Negroes!” she said to the settlement worker. “They are simply impossible! I have known it all along, but I had begun to hope; such persistent, ineradicable immorality! and flaunted purposely in our very faces! It is intolerable!”
The settlement worker murmured somewhat indistinctly about the world being “well lost” for something, as they climbed into a cab and flew north.
The Republican boss, the state official, and the banker loomed in the doorway, pulling on their gloves, adjusting their coats and cravats, and hailing hurrying taxis.
“Well, of all the damned fiascos,” said the banker.
“Niggers in Congress! Well!” said the official.
“It is just as well,” said the boss. “In fact it is almost providential. It looked as though we had to send a Negro to Congress. That unpleasant possibility is now indefinitely postponed. Of course, now we’ll have to send you.”
“Oh!” said the banker softly and deprecatingly.
“It is going to cost something,” said the boss shrewdly. “You will have to buy up all these darky newspapers and grease Sammy’s paw extraordinarily well. The point is, buying is possible now. They have no comeback. Sammy may have aspirations, but I think we can make even him see that it will be unwise to put up another colored candidate now. No, the thing ​has turned out extraordinarily well; but I wonder what the devil got hold of Towns, acting as though he was crazy?”
The physician's wife and the lawyer's lingered a little, clustering to one side so as to avoid meeting the white folks; they stared and whispered.
“It is the most indecent thing I have heard of,” said the physician's wife. The lawyer's wife moaned in her distress:
“To think of a Negro acting that way, and before these people! And after all this work. Won't we ever amount to anything? Won't we ever get any leaders? I am simply disgusted and discouraged. I'll never work for another Negro leader as long as I live.”
And they followed their husbands to the two large sedans that stood darkly groaning, waiting.
The physician snarled to the minister, “And with the streets full of women cheaper and prettier.”
The Labor delegation had pushed into the library as Matthew and Kautilya left, and entered the reception room. They stood now staring at the disheveled room and the guests rushing away.
“What's happened?”
“Has he told them what's what?”
“Are they deserting us? Are they running away?”
But the colored club women walked away in silence in the rain. They parted at the corner and one said:
“I'm proud of him, at last.”
But the other spit:
“The beast!”
XXV
Sammy's world was tottering, and looking upon its astonishing ruins he could only gasp blankly:
“What t’ hell!”
Never before in his long career and wide acquaintanceship with human nature had it behaved in so fantastic and unpredictable a manner. Never had it acted with such incalculable and utter disregard of all rules and wise saws. That a man should cheat, lie, steal, and seduce women, was to Sammy's mind almost normal; that he should tell the truth, give away his money, and stick by his wife was also at times probable. ​These things happened. He’d seen them done. But that a man with everything should choose nothing: that a man with high office in his grasp, money ready to pour into his pocket, a home like this, and both a wife and a sweetheart, should toss them all away and walk out into the rain without his hat, just for an extra excursion with a skirt—
“What t’ hell!” gasped Sammy, groping back into the empty house. Then suddenly he heard the voice of Sara.
He found her standing stark alone, a pitiful, tragic figure amid the empty glitter of her triumph, with her flesh-colored chiffon and her jewels, her smooth stockings and silver slippers. She had stripped the beads from her throat, and they were dripping through her clenched fingers. She had half torn the lace from her breast, and she stood there flushed, trembling, furious with anger, and almost screaming to ears that did not hear and to guests already gone.
“Haven’t I been decent? Haven’t I fought off you beasts and made me a living and a home with my own hands? Wasn’t I married like a respectable woman, and didn’t I drag this fool out of jail and make him a man? And what do I get? What do I get? Here I am, disgraced and ruined, mocked and robbed, a laughing-stock to all Chicago. What did he want? What did the jackass want, my God? A cabaret instead of a home? A whore instead of a wife? Wasn’t I true to him? Did I ever let a man touch me? I made money—sure, I made money. I had to make money. He couldn’t. I made money out of politics. What in hell is politics for, if it isn’t for somebody to make money? Must we hand all the graft over to the holy white folks? And now he disgraces me! Just when I win, he throws me over for a common bawd from the streets, and a mess of dirty white laborers; a common slut stealing decent women’s husbands. Oh—”
Sammy touched her hesitatingly on the shoulder and pleaded:
“Don’t crack, kid. Stand the gaff. I'll see you through.”
But she shrank away from him and screamed:
“Get out, don’t touch me. Oh, damn him, damn him! I wish I could horsewhip them; I wish I could kill them both.”
And suddenly Sara crumpled to the floor, crushing and tearing her silks and scattering her jewels, drawing her knees up ​tight and gripping them with twitching hands, burying her hair, her head and streaming eyes, in the crimson carpet, and rolling and shaking and struggling with strangling sobs.
While without gray mists lay thin upon a pale and purple city. Through them, like cold, wet tears dripped the slow brown rain. The muffled roar of moving millions thundered low upon the wind, and the blue wind sighed and sank into the black night; and through the chill dripping of the waters, hatless and coatless, moved two shapes, hand in hand, with uplifted heads, singing to the storm.