A Gentleman from Mississippi. Frederick R. Toombs
he slowly regained control of himself. His fury had actually weakened him. His knees shook, and he sank weakly into a chair. When he finally spoke his voice was strained and laborious. "Sanders, you and I, sir, must never meet again, because I might not succeed in keeping my hands off you. What would my old comrades of the Third Mississippi say if they saw me sitting here and you there with a whole body, sir, after what you have said? They would not believe their eyes, thank God, sir. They would all go over to Stuart City and buy new glasses, sir." A suspicious moisture appeared on the Colonel's cheeks which he could not dry too quickly to escape Sanders' observation.
"But I had to let you stay, sir, because you, the sole accuser, are the only one who can tell me what I must know."
"What do you want to know?" asked Sanders, who had realized his great mistake in losing his temper, in talking as openly and as violently as he had and in dragging the name of Senator Stevens into the controversy. He must try to keep Stevens from hearing of this day's blunder, for Jim Stevens knew as well as he, didn't he, that the man who loses his temper, like the man who talks too much, is of no use in politics.
"I want to know how you formed your opinion of political matters—of Senators. Is it possible, sir, that you have actual knowledge of actual happenings that give you the right to talk as you have? I want to know if I must feel shame, feel disgrace, sir, to be a Senator from Mississippi; that State, sir, that the Almighty himself, sir, would choose to live in if he came to earth."
"There, there, Senator, don't take too seriously what I have said," Sanders replied in reassuring tone, having outlined his course of action. "I lost my head because you wouldn't promise me something I needed—that appointment for Hagley. What I said about Senators an' such was all wild words—nothin' in 'em. Why, how could there be, Senator?" This query was a happy afterthought which Sanders craftily suggested in a designedly artless manner.
"Just what I thought and know!" exclaimed Langdon, sharply. "It couldn't be; it isn't possible. Now you go, sir, and let it be your greatest disgrace that you are not fit to enter any gentleman's house."
"Oh, don't rub it in too hard, Senator. You may need my help some day, but you'll have to deliver the goods beforehand."
"I said, 'Go!'"
"I'm goin', but here's a tip. Don't blame me for fightin' you. I've got to fight to live. I'm a human bein', an' humans are pretty much the same all over the world; all except you—you're only half natural. The rest of you is reformer."
After Sanders' departure the Colonel sat at his table, his head resting in his hand, the events of the day crowding his brain bewilderingly.
"The battles of peace are worse than any Beauregard ever led me into," he murmured. "Fighting o conquer oneself is harder than turning the left flank of the Eighth Illinois in an enfilading fire."
But the new Senator from Mississippi did not know that for him the wars of peace had only just begun, that perhaps his own flesh and blood and that of the wife and mother who had gone before would turn traitor to his colors in the very thickest of the fray.
CHAPTER III
HOW TO PLEASE A SENATOR
The International Hotel in Washington was all hustle and bustle. Was it not preparing for its first Senator since 1885? No less a personage than the Hon. William H. Langdon of Mississippi, said to be a warm personal friend of Senator Stevens, one of the leading members of his party at the capital, had engaged a suit of rooms for himself and two daughters.
"Ain't it the limit?" remarked the chief clerk to Bud Haines, correspondent of the New York Star. "The Senator wrote us that he was coming here because his old friend, the late Senator Moseley, said back in '75 that this was the best hotel in Washington and where all the prominent men ought to stay."
Haines, the ablest political reporter in Washington, had come to the International to interview the new Senator, to describe for his paper what kind of a citizen Langdon was. He glanced around at the dingy woodwork, the worn cushions, the nicked and uneven tiles of the hotel lobby, and smiled at the clerk. "Well, if this is the new Senator's idea of princely luxury he will fit right into the senatorial atmosphere." Both laughed derisively. "By the way," added Haines, "I suppose you'll raise your rates now that you've got a Senator here."
The clerk brought his fist down on the register with a thud.
"We could have them every day if we wanted them. This fellow, though, we'll have all winter, I guess. His son's here now. Been breaking all records for drinking. Congressman Norton of Mississippi has been down here with him a few times. There young Langdon is now."
Haines turned quickly, just in time to bump into a tall, slender young man, who was walking unevenly in the direction of the café.
"Well, can't you see what you're doing?" muttered the tall young man thickly.
Haines smiled. The chap who has played halfback four years on his college eleven and held the boxing championship in his class is apt to be good-natured. He does not have to take offense easily. Besides, Randolph Langdon was plainly under the influence of whisky. So Haines smiled pleasantly at the taller young man.
"Beg your pardon—my fault," Haines said.
"Well, don't let it occur again," mumbled Langdon, as he strolled with uneven dignity toward the door. Bud Haines laughed.
"I guess young Langdon is going to be one of the boys, isn't he?"
"He's already one of them when it comes to a question of fluid capacity," laughed some one behind him, and Bud whirled to meet the gaze of his friend, Dick Gullen, representative of one of the big Chicago dailies.
"You down here to see Langdon, too?" commented Bud.
Cullen nodded. "Queer roost where this Senator is to hang out, isn't it?"
"He can't be a rich one, then," suggested Haines.
Cullen chuckled.
"Perhaps he's an honest one."
"I hadn't thought of that. You always were original, Dickie," commented Haines, dryly. "By the way, what do you know about him?"
"Nothing, except that the Evening Call printed a picture of his eldest daughter—says she's the queen daughter of the South, a famous beauty, rich planter for a father, mother left her a fortune—"
"She'll cut quite a social caper with this hotel's name on her cards, won't she?" broke in Haines, as he led Cullen to a seat to await the expected legislator, whose train was late.
"I don't know very much about him myself," said Haines. "All I've been able to discover is that Stevens said the word which elected him, and that looks bad. Great glory! When I think what a Senator of the right sort has a chance to do here in Washington—a nonpartisan, straight-out-from-the-shoulder man!" He paused to shake his head in disgust. "You know these fellows here in the Senate don't even see their chance. Why, if you and I didn't do any more to hold our jobs than they do, we'd be fired by wire the first day. They know just the old political game, that's all."
"Its a great game, though, Bud," sighed Cullen, longingly, for, like many newspaper men, he had the secret feeling that he was cut out to be a great politician.
"Sure, it's a great game, as a game," agreed Haines. "So is bridge, and stud poker, and three-card monte, and flim-flam generally. Take this new man Langdon, for instance. Chosen by Stevens, he'll probably be perfectly obedient, perfectly easy going, perfectly blind and—perfectly useless. What's wanted now is to get the work done, not play the game."
Thoroughly a cynic through his years of experience as a newspaper man, which had shown the inside workings of many important phases of the seemingly conventional life of this complex world, Cullen pretended unbounded enthusiasm.
"Hear!