University of Virginia Library

23. CHAPTER XXIII.

THANKS to the labors of solemn Mr. Sharp
and of worldly Mr. Ironman, our member
soon had a fair prospect of getting on the investigating
committee, supposing always that there
should be such a nuisance.

But the nearer he came to this post of responsibility
and honor, the more it looked to him as
though it might turn out a whipping-post, at
which he would stand with exposed shoulders
and bleeding cuticle. If he as a judge should be
able to close the court-room doors, and keep out
not only spectators but also the witnesses in the
case, all might go famously well, at least from
the Satanic point of view. But if, while pretending
to examine into the little games of others,
the same kind of cards should be found up his
own sleeves, he would be ruined beyond a hope

of re-election. The sad state of a boy whose
pockets are full of fire-crackers in a state of
crackling and scorching ignition, would be but a
feeble image of such a disaster. In these days
he vacillated as rapidly and disagreeably as if he
were astride some monstrous shuttlecock, or were
being seesawed by all the giants of fairy-tale
land. His pulpy pink face wore an air of abiding
perplexity which rivalled that of his Dundrearyish
friend, Ironman. At times it seemed
as if its large watery features would decompose
entirely with irresolution, and come to resemble
an image of strawberry ice which has been exposed
to too high a temperature.

Meantime, the spectre of investigation advanced,
and its pointing finger renewed his
sense of guilt. The approach of punishment
always enlightens a sinner marvellously as to
the heinous nature of his sin. Even the Devil,
when visited by the hand of sickness, perceived
that he had led an evil life, and hungered to
withdraw from a world of temptation and thirsted

to take holy orders. Just so John Vane now
discovered plainly once more that he had been
pocketing bribes and swindling the public treasury,
and that these were very wrong actions. If
he had never truly had a conscience before, but
had regulated his conduct by the consciences
of others, he at last possessed one of his
own. Indeed, it appeared to him a very large
one because it was sore, precisely as a man's
nose seems large to him while yet tender from
a fisticuff. From one point of view, he was
an honester John Vane than he had ever been,
inasmuch as terror and remorse made him intelligently
honest with himself.

Before he could decide to accept a position on
the committee, he must be sure that Sharp &
Co. would conceal his ownership of their stock,
and he called on Dorman to obtain a positive
promise to that effect. It is wonderful, by the
way, how rogues in distress will trust each other's
word, even when each knows by experience that
the other is a confirmed liar.

“Look here, Darius, the more I stir up this
business, the worse it looks to me,” he groaned
from the summit of a state of mind which almost
raised him to the moral altitude of a penitent
thief.

Dorman responded by groaning over his end
of the burden, which naturally seemed to him
much heavier than Vane's; each of these invalids,
like the majority of commonplace sick people,
wanted to talk of his own malady and symptoms.
Still, there was a sort of fellow-feeling
between them, such as even small-pox patients
have for each other. Dorman no longer purposed
financial vengeance upon Vane for getting his
stock at par and paying no commission. Nor
was Vane sensibly embittered against Dorman,
although the latter had made a large fortune
out of the Subfluvial, while he himself had only
pocketed a beggarly thousand or two.

“It's the cursed unfairness of the thing that
yerks me,” the lobbyist complained. “Now isn't
it too bad that the public should want to haul

our job over the hottest kind of coals, when ever
so many other jobs just like it ain't spoken of?”

We must remark here, what the reader has
doubtless already noticed, that there was something
disappointing in this creature's conversation.
While his person and demeanor reminded
one of the supernatural castaways of the lake
of fire, his discourse was insignificantly human
and even smacked of a very low down sort of
humanity.

“And here I am in it, for almost nothing,”
sighed Vane, returning instinctively to his own
case. “What sort of a story are you going to
tell, Darius, if they put you on the stand?” he
presently inquired.

“O, I would say anything that would do the
most good,” grimaced the lobbyist. “But Sharp
means to let out a few facts; that is, if they
crowd him. You see, Sharp unluckily has a
character to nurse. I dare say, too, he thinks
he can stop questions by showing that he means
to answer them,” added Dorman, who always
imputed the lowest motives.

Thoroughly scared by this information, Vane
resolved to keep off the committee. He went
home in the dumps, wished he had never gone
into politics, and meditated resigning his seat.
Perhaps he would have taken this wholesome
step, but he was moved first to consult Olympia
about it, and she flatly refused to resign.

“I won't agree to it,—no, never!” she exclaimed,
rustling in all her silks with indignation.
“Why, I have just fairly got into the best society,
and there are all the receptions to come, and the
inauguration ball! and the winter is going to be
so gay!”

“O—well,” stared John, who had not thought
to look at this side of the medal; “but we must
stick to boarding, if we do stay,” he capitulated
on conditions. “I tell you the winter ain't going
to be gay in Congress, and there won't be much
money lying around loose, and we must skimp.”

Before many days he found cause to pluck up
his courage a little. He learned that Slowburgh
considered him innocent of evil, meaning, of

course, that half of Slowburgh which had voted
for him. The committee of a certain association
sent him an invitation to lecture before it, and
promised that “the appearance of his honest face
on their platform would be the signal of frantic
applause.” Furthermore, certain newspapers remarked
that, although John Vane was suspected
of owning Hen Persuader stock, he had at least
not denied such ownership, and commented upon
the fact as an unusual exhibition of uprightness
and manliness—in a Congressman. These
things revived his confidence so much that his
mind was able to work. He saw his game clear
before him; he must get in a “long suit” of
frankness. There was a little trick, which, if
skilfully and luckily played, would give him such
a repute for veracity and for just intentions that
all the caverns of the Great Subfluvial could not
swallow it. What this happy thought was we
shall learn presently.

Meantime the excitement of the men outside
politics increased. That vast, industrious, decent

American public, which wire-pullers usually regard
as having no more intelligence or moral
principle than one of the forces of nature, showed
unmistakably that it possessed much political
virtue and some political sense. The discovery
that the so-called slanders against its favorites
were, in all probability, verities, only made it
more determined that those slanders should be
investigated. The steady tempest of its righteous
indignation scattered good seed through
Congress, and produced on that upland of statesmanship
a promising nubbin or two of conscience.
An investigation was ordered, at first
under hermetically sealed conditions, but the
popular storm soon blew the doors open.

The rest we manly know; the whole alien
world of monarchies, empires, and despotisms
knows it; the capacity of republicanism for honest
government is everywhere being judged by it.
In every civilized land on this planet, thoughtful
souls are seeking to divine, by the light of these
and other similar dolorous revelations, whether it

is possible for a democracy to save itself from
the corrupting tyranny of capital. Within our
own borders sadder spirits are asking which is the
most alluring spectacle,—a free America falling
into squandering and bribery, or a monarchial
Prussia ruled by economy and honesty.

We know how it fared with Christian and Faithful
and Hopeful and Greatheart and other venerated
statesmen who had turned more or less into
the ways of Achan and Ananias. Anxious to
clear themselves of an ugly charge, and trusting
that the chief manipulator of the Hen Persuader
would be willing to bear their sins in return for
their services, they had flatly denied having taken
any golden eggs out of his abstracting machine.
But this disclaimer left Mr. Simon Sharp under
the imputation of putting said eggs into his own
pocket, and so plundering his partners in the enterprise
of making the national hen lay on indefinitely.
Being a man of exact arithmetical instincts,
and of inveterate, ingrained business habits, he
revolted from such an unfair allotment of the dividends

of dishonor, and insisted that every one
should take his own share and no more. To the
astonishment of everybody, he told a story as
straight and searching as a ploughman's furrow;
and we will venture to say that no American was
proud of the unexpected skeletons which it turned
up. There was a time when every fair political
reputation reminded us of the Arabian oil-jars,
each one of which held a robber; when it seemed
as if we should have to concede that our legislative
temple was but a den of thieves, sadly given to
lying. It was a new and perversely reversed
and altogether bedevilled rendering of the Pilgrim's
Progress into American politics; it was
much as if Bunyan had at the last pitched his
Christian and Hopeful into the little lurid hole
which led from the gate of Zion to the pit. Nothing
could well be more subverting and confounding
and debilitating to the moral sense, unless it might
be to see silver Demas and filthy Muckrake welcomed
by the shining ones into the Holy City.

And something similar to this last marvel was
not wanting.