University of Virginia Library

5. A WOMAN IN IT.

Responding to Ned's confession that he has become engaged to Kate Hamming and feels that a wife will have a "great influence on his career," William Bradley tells the story of one good woman's tragic influence in the life of a young politician—and points the conclusion that one guess is as good as another in a political situation with a woman in it.

Brokenstraw Ranch, —, 19—.

Dear Ned: —

And so you've decided to take unto yourself a wife in the person of Kate Haming? Good! That part of the departure isn't open to debate. And neither is your observation that you feel your wife will have a "decided influence" on your political career. But no being short of the Almighty is able to give anything like a safe guess on whether that influence will be of the sort you are counting on. This is one of the things as inscrutable as the mystery of godliness.

Any fair sample of common American womanhood is a prize package for a bachelor politician to draw; but when it comes to the question of her influence on his career, one guess is as good as another. And this uncertainty isn't a matter of the particular kind of feminine loveliness that the woman in the case happens to represent. She may be as attractive as a lost bargain and as tactful as brook trout and still manage to warp your political destiny until it cracks.

I never see a young politician push his head into the matrimonial lariat without thinking of young Flournoy, one of the first speakers out here after the territory became a state. His story shows how a woman's presence in the background of a politician's life can change the whole face of the landscape.

When the Almighty put the finishing touches to young Flournoy's makeup and hitched him up for life's heat, He checked him high. You remember that thoroughbred Kentucky colt I used to drive the first year I occupied the Executive Mansion? Head up, ears forward, set on a hair trigger and ready to shy at a butterfly, and so sensitive that a harsh word would throw her into the dumps for a whole day? If I had that little mare now I'd call her Flournoy.

The young man was as proud as a girl with her first long skirt and as ambitious as Lucifer. He had a good ranch and kept severely to himself until a little school teacher with snappy gray eyes, dimples, and a cleft chin came from New York to teach district No. 10. I never saw a bucket of water bring a gopher out of his hole quicker than that mite of a schoolmarm brought Flournoy out of his shell! He spruced up amazingly, and never passed the schoolhouse or the place where she boarded without wearing clothes that would have graced a wedding.

Right at the start the young man got it into his head that Miss Dove was made of superior clay and that her blood was bluer than a royal whetstone. It never occurred to him for an instant that a good, clean, young chap like himself was worthy to come into her presence or could be of the slightest possible interest to her unless he could do some knightly stunt that would specially entitle him to her condescension. There's no doubt that the girl was so dead lonesome and homesick that she would have given her shoes for the companionship of a man like Flournoy, and would have primped in front of the glass for an hour if she had been given any reason to suspect that he might call.

But the young rancher continued to adore at a distance and to lie awake nights scheming about how he could distinguish himself in her eyes.

There wasn't much doing in the way of opportunity for old fashioned heroics just then and there. The prairies refused to burn, tramps kept shy of the country for fear of being set to work, not a dog went mad, no villain offered insult to the little school teacher, and altogether there wasn't the slightest chance for her knight to rush in and rescue her from insult or peril.

Perhaps you think Flournoy didn't figure on any of these things. That's because you never saw him. One glance into his big black eyes was like reading a whole historical romance at a gulp. You may take my word for it that there wasn't a dramatic possibility that this adoring lover hadn't figured on. He saw the whole situation through age-of-chivalry eyes, and all he needed to fit him for a knight was a little scrap-iron clothing and a good deal of bad language.

But in the absence of any better field of valor, he decided to take to politics. We've been told, until we're tired of it, that "all the world loves a lover," but it's gospel truth just the same—and when Flournoy intimated to the boss of his district that he wanted to go to the House the old Platt-in-overalls decided that for once he'd indulge the luxury of a little sentiment. So he put the thing through and landed Flournoy on the ticket. The opposition was mighty strong that year, and if it hadn't been for the quiet way in which the boss put forward what the literary critics call the "romance element," his candidate certainly would have been skinned at the polls. But the love affair caught the fancy of all the old boys and some of the young ones, and Flournoy found himself elected, addressed as "honorable," and petted by the whole community.

Before the smell of the fireworks celebrating his election had been blown out of the main street of Bullseye, Flournoy began to receive telegrams and delegations from the various factions fighting for control of the House. He was just wise enough to play safety and not tie up with any particular crowd, but he was kept so busy returning the evasive answer that he didn't have a chance to call on the little school teacher and throw his future at her feet. In fact, the night when he had put on his best garments and his statesman's smile and was walking the floor in a mild effort to screw up his courage for a call on her, a male siren from another district dropped in and delicately intimated that stranger things had happened than the selection of Robert Flournoy as speaker of the House. And when the political siren closed his dark-horse song he left a book of parliamentary rules for young Flournoy's perusal and inspiration.

The poison worked so swiftly that instead of treading the cottonwood lane that led to Squire Baldwin's house, where the school teacher boarded, as he had intended, Flournoy sat straddle of a kitchen chair, his head resting on its back, and his mind working on the splendid possibilities ahead. It didn't take him long to figure that if a membership in the House was a strong card to play in his suit for the hand of the school teacher the speakership would be a royal flush. If the stake had been his own life he couldn't have been in more deadly earnest, so he concluded to wait a bit and make a try for the speakership before he showed his hand.

Consequently, he sent his love affair into committee for future report and struck out for the capital. There he found things split up into three bunches, with party lines lost in the scramble for power. The regulars and the insurgents were evenly divided and three hungry scouts held the balance of power. The scouts stood out until the last minute before the formal opening of the House, and it looked as if the deadlock might be good for half the life of the session.

But just then the hatchet-faced old warhorse of the Insurgents, who had whispered the siren song to Flournoy, took a grip on the situation and showed that he could spell organization with a big "O." He had an under jaw like the lower blade of a rolling mill shears, the sort that snips off steel rails as easy as a small boy bites stick candy. And his eyes had about as much of the glow of human kindness as the points of two diamond drills. "Old Jawbone," as the boys called him, was a seasoned terrier, who had been waiting for years to set his teeth into a "good thing." He saw his chance and made a lunge for it.

Suddenly, out of the chaos of things, came the word that he had whipped the three scouts into line and with their votes the Insurgents would put young Flournoy into the speaker's chair. And they did it, too, in short order, after the state patronage had been parceled out to meet the demands of the scouts.

Probably no speaker ever carried into the big chair at the head of a state House of Representatives a happier heart that Flournoy's. He fairly perspired beads of joy. A kitten with a dozen balls of yarn would have made a solemn spectacle alongside the young speaker. And a kitten presiding over a pack of timber wolves would have been an example of the eternal fitness of things compared with young Flournoy as the ruling officer of that House. He had no more idea of the nature of his job and the powers that were playing with him than a cock sparrow caught in a cyclone has of the thing he is up against.

It meant just one thing to Flournoy—the girl! Beyond her he saw nothing, knew nothing, cared nothing. His sudden political honors were only trophies to be flung at her feet.

Just before adjournment at the close of the first week he wrote Miss Lucy Dove, asking if he might take the liberty of calling upon her Saturday evening. And he didn't lose sight of the probability that she would be duly impressed by the imposing official stationery upon which his note was written.

Of course, just what he said to her that night, as they walked up and down between the two long rows of cottonwood in the light of the Autumn moon, isn't of record, excepting as it was written on his face when he showed up at the beginning of the week. One of the boys who was in his open secret read the speaker's face with the remark: "He's had his petition hung up in the hands of a friendly committee, with an intimation of speedy and favorable action."

Sometimes the whole front of his countenance was hung with the bunting of assured hope, only to be changed in the space of an hour to the dark draperies of threatening despair. But the game that was put up to him in the course of the week was swifter than anything he had ever thought of, and, together with the worry about the young woman, it wore him to a frazzle.

But at last the members adjourned for another Sunday at home, and he packed his grip and made for Bullseye on the first train. The sight of young Flournoy's face when he returned was something to warm the heart of a cobblestone. Even "Old Jawbone" actually thawed for an instant under the radiance of it. The wedding card was spread on Flournay's countenance in plainer terms than on the engraved announcements that were opened by the members. He had won the heart of the little school teacher as suddenly as he had landed the speakership. There was an irrepressible "young Lochinvar" look in his eye, and he rapped his gavel with a new ring of confidence.

"Old Jawbone" figured that the right minute had come to spring his biggest game on the "boy speaker," as he sometimes called Flournoy when talking with the "gray wolves" of the Insurgent gang. Consequently, he had a private conference with the knight of the chair, and laid out the lines of the gang program. And the layout was as rotten and high handed a deal as was ever put up by a bunch of Black Hills road agents.

There wasn't any more duplicity in Flournoy's composition than in an antelope's, and he shied openly at the proposition. Then the under jaw of the Insurgent chief set tight and sudden, and he said: "Give me your last word on this tomorrow noon."

If Flournoy intended to take his bride into his confidence on the matter he changed his mind and fought it out inside himself. Probably he was ashamed to show her what a dirty mess was being brewed among the men who belonged to his political camp. But he knew, all right, what the thing would look like in her eyes, and that was enough for him. He stood by the white plummet line of her conscience, as he saw it, and prepared to abide by the results.

Although he recognized that he was up against the biggest bout he had encountered since he had gone into the knighthood business, he had as little conception of what could happen to him as a baby left on a railroad track.

That noon, after he had kissed his wife a dozen times and received her promise that she would come to the House in the course of the afternoon, he cinched up his armor and went into the speaker's private room, ready for the joust with the Hon. "Jawbone." And he had it hot, too! A member passing the door overheard the voice of the "boy speaker" declaring: "Sir, you're a contemptible scoundrel—a disgrace to your state and your race! I'd rather die than do the infamous thing you demand." And as the eavesdropping member belonged to the Insurgent gang, he told this snatch of stolen conversation as a good joke. In five minutes everybody in the House knew that the war was on.

"Old Jawbone's" face was the color of stale liver when he came out into the open—and the speaker's as white as a sheet. Flournoy's legs faltered as he climbed the stairs to his chair and watched "Old Jawbone" scurrying to the seats of the faithful, like a pirate passing orders for the scuttling of a ship.

Suddenly the lieutenant of the Insurgents arose and received the recognition of the chair. With a sperm-oil smile on his face he slowly and calmly moved the adoption of a resolution deposing the speaker on the ground of "gross incompetency."

"Shame!" "Outrage!" came the cries from the Regulars—and in the next minute the word went down the line from their leader to vote for the retention of the man who had been seated by their opponents. For the next few minutes things centered about the three scouts. As the young speaker stood there, dumbly holding on to his desk, a dazed, wild look in his eyes, the clerk put the motion in a foghorn voice. At that instant a smiling usher appeared in the doorway beside the speaker's platform, followed by three women. They stopped suddenly. The speaker's chalky face turned in their direction just long enough for one glance. He quivered for an instant, then dropped.

"The motion is carried," bellowed the clerk—but the scream of the woman who leaped up the stairs of the speaker's platform cut the uproar like a knife. It was a good thing that "Old Jawbone" had made himself scarce before the Regulars realized what had happened. They would have made short work of him just then !

When the young speaker was revived it was only to rave wildly about his wife—and she was about as stark mad as he. It was real tragedy with a vengeance. The strain had snapped the taut cord of Flournoy's mentality. He lasted a week—but never saw a sane minute. And if ever a broken heart looked out of a woman's face—like a lost soul—it looked from the face of the little school teacher, the Lady of the Lost Knight, as I have always called her.

And so, Ned, do you wonder I say you can't tell what is going to happen when a woman—no matter how fine and good—comes into the life of a man who is in the scramble of politics?

Yours ever,

William Bradley.