The American: A Middle Western Legend (29 page)

II

For Tuesday, and a while before and a while after, Emma engaged a suite of rooms at the Palmer House. She would have preferred Springfield; she wanted the sense of security that Springfield could give her, for the past several months had been like a lifetime, and when she looked at her husband now she felt that perhaps it was more than that, the ending of a life. But when she broached it to him, he shrugged and said:

“I would want it as much as you, Emma, but the best we can do is to go there as soon as it is over. I have to be in Chicago; they'll want to see me, and all of them can't see me if I'm in Springfield.”

“Haven't they seen you enough, Pete?”

“Apparently not.” It was like that. With Bryan nominated, sitting in his chair in that insane convention hall, it had occurred to him that perhaps he had lost as much as Bryan had won. But a moment later, Jones, the new national committee head, pushed his way through the mob up to his chair and asked, bewilderedly, “Governor, what do we do?” “Do? You have Bryan.” “For god's sake, Governor, you're not going to walk out on us?” Altgeld began to laugh; he reached out and grabbed Jones' arm, laughing hugely. “When in hell have I walked out on anything?” he managed to say. Jones asked, “You'll see Bryan?” “I'll see him. Don't be a fool.” It was like that.

“Apparently not,” Altgeld said again. “A little more, another few days, Emma.”

“All right.” She gave in. One learned, in time, that there was no purpose in arguing with him. At one of his meetings, in the audience, she had sat next to two women who discussed him aloofly and with objective curiosity. Overhearing, she could not bring herself to stop them or to move away. One said, “Look at him.” “He's dying, you know,” the other said. “You know what he's dying from?” “I've heard—” “Well, you can tell from the way he walks, there's no doubt. Just think what his wife feels.” “I feel sorry for her. I don't feel sorry for him.”

Emma wasn't sorry for herself. Today, on election morning, she considered that she would not change places with any woman in the world. She was Pete Altgeld's wife, and she had been with Pete Altgeld these four months past now, watched him, worked with him. It was to her that he said, late one night, “Emma, I'm beginning to learn something. I'm beginning to learn that a person grows with struggle—maybe no other way.” Now she had only to think of the Emma Ford that she had been once to realize the fullest implications of that.

Today, she was here in the suite in the Palmer House, and it was her day as well as her husband's; she was more afraid than he, and yet more certain than he. When he was out voting and Hinrichsen called, she could say:

“Come up, Buck. Of course.”

“He's not angry?”

“Why? Why should he be angry? You don't know Pete.”

“I thought he might have figured it as a double cross.”

“Buck!”

“All right.”

“Buck, did anyone work harder than he trying to elect Bryan? If he doesn't get elected—Pete, I mean—it will only be because he used all he had for Bryan.”

“I know. I don't know why.”

“You should. Don't be a fool. Come up and talk to him.”

It began as that kind of a day. Some reporters came, and she told them to return later. She wanted to be sedate and calm today, which was important, if ever it was important for her to have been that way. Waiting for her husband, she looked over the day's papers, the screaming, last-minute attacks on her husband, the somber editorials, informing the public that if Bryan were elected, a silent dictator would enter the White House, John Peter Altgeld, and the republic would come to an end. An end and a finish; anarchy, socialism, and ruin.

She thought of two times since the convention, when her husband had seen Bryan.

III

She had not been there the first time. It had been after the convention, directly after, and Pete had told her of it, how Bryan came up, a little afraid, a good deal abashed, but still glowing and walking on clouds:

“Governor—”

“Hullo, Bill,” Altgeld had said. “Congratulations.”

“Well—well, it came out that way. I guess that's all, it just came out that way.”

“It just happened,” Altgeld grinned, telling Emma how Bryan had stood there, more like a boy than ever, more like an overgrown, handsome farm boy, realizing only by slow degrees what had happened, that he was the party candidate for president of the United States, and wanting desperately to ask Altgeld a question he couldn't frame, “Are you going to be with me? For me or against me? Because I did this; I never believed I could do it, but I did it.”

“What do you think, Governor?” he managed to say.

“I think it's going to be hard. Bill, I think it's going to be hard as hell.”

And Bryan nodded, smiling a little foolishly. That was the way her husband had told it to her. He had a way of leaving things out. He came back from the convention with the blood drained from him, but he could nevertheless laugh and say, “Do you know, I'm learning, Emma. And in the process, the edges are rubbed off. There are a lot of edges to be rubbed off, Emma, and I suppose that eventually, I'll smooth out.”

She was with him the second time he saw Bryan. The simple disobedience of his body, which refused any longer to obey him, allowed for a few weeks' rest before the final phase of the campaign set in. Emma suggested Colorado Springs, and he agreed with the proposal, albeit some what reluctantly. But once on the train and in their compartment, he collapsed; it was as if the springs and the hinges and the wires had melted away, and there was no strength left to do anything but lie in a chair. Emma read to him, tended him, and sat and talked with him. They talked for hours. All of his groping for a perspective was being channeled now, and after the nomination of Bryan and his own physical letdown, the pieces, peculiarly, fitted better. He was able to arrange himself in the scheme of things. Quite confidently, he said to his wife:

“When this campaign is over, I think I'll know what to do. I think it will be very clear.”

He didn't talk about victory or defeat. The campaign was a stage; it would be over, and then there would be another stage. It was there that he told her, for the first time, of going to the funeral so long ago, back in '87, and how he had stood there in the cold winter morning, watching the endless column of workingmen go by. He said:

“If I had spoken to any one of them, Emma, it would have dissolved; but to see them like that, all together, one expression on ten thousand faces, well, it meant something. I mean, in their relation to me, in mine to them. But when I want to put my hand on what it meant—well, I stop short. I always stop short. But after this campaign—”

At Lincoln, Nebraska, the train laid over for two hours. Bryan was waiting there, and hardly had the train stopped when he was knocking at the door of the compartment.

“Governor, how are you feeling?” he demanded, speaking words that were rehearsed, swallowing over them, and striding in with both his hands extended to Altgeld. The Governor sat in a chair, his legs wrapped in a robe, and Bryan was not unfamiliar with the thin smile that greeted him.

“I'm fine, Bill. How are you?”

“Like an ox,” Bryan answered, grinning at Emma. “The last thing in the world to trouble me is my health. But I heard you were sick; I worried.”

“Bill, sit down and stop panting. You knew damn well a year ago that I was sick. Emma, get him something to drink—get him a lemonade, we're in Nebraska.” Emma called the porter; Bryan eased his big bulk into a chair, rose again with Emma. “Sit down, sit down,” Altgeld said. Bryan smiled sheepishly. The rehearsed lines were finished, and he sat there with his hands on his knees, staring at the Governor. Altgeld said, “Well, how does it feel to be the candidate?”

Bryan shook his head. “I don't know—it's a feeling I can't get used to.” The bars were down; he started to speak, swallowed, and then said, “Governor, I swear—I never thought—”

“You didn't. You sure as hell never thought so! But you couldn't stop. You rode it like a kid riding a washtub down a snow slide. Wait a minute—I'm not angry. Just forget that. You're the candidate and only one thing matters, that next year you should move into the White House. That's all that matters, Bill. Understand that.”

Bryan moved between anger and withdrawal; he hung there for one long moment, and then Altgeld thrust out his hand and said, “This is for what's gone, Bill.”

They shook hands, and Bryan was smiling again. The lemonade came, and he sat there sipping it. Altgeld watched him, studying him at this close range, as he told Emma afterwards, wondering how he could relax him and turn out what was inside, considering that there was something inside. Emma began to talk to him, asking about his family, about the life here in Nebraska. Young as he was, he showed Washington conditioning; it was difficult for him to state a thing as a matter of fact rather than as a proclamation. And he wanted Altgeld to speak. Able to contain himself no longer, he asked bluntly:

“Governor, what are our chances?”

“When? Now, tomorrow, or on election day?”

“On election day, of course.”

“Well, I don't know,” Altgeld said. “It's a long time to election day, isn't it?”

“But you could guess, estimate.”

“I don't guess,” Altgeld smiled. “I don't guess, Bill. When you know certain things, you can add them up. Sometimes you know some things and there are other things that you don't know. Is that what you mean by guessing? You never know all the things, not even after the votes are counted. Right now, how much do we know?”

“We know that McKinley's a bag of clothes, and that Mark Hanna's got him dancing on strings. We know that the people are pretty well fed up with the way Wall Street runs the country.”

“Do we?”

“We know that the people want free silver coinage.”

Altgeld's voice dropped; his voice had a tendency to grind and rasp and hammer; when he spoke softly, he could eliminate this. He wanted to eliminate it now; he wanted nothing to stand between him and William Jennings Bryan. In the normal course of things, it was difficult enough to talk to Bryan, but now Bryan was in the saddle; he came to Altgeld because Altgeld still led the party, but he couldn't forget that he was in the saddle in spite of the Governor of Illinois and not because of him. Now Altgeld said:

“Bill, we talk a lot about the people—I do, you do, and if I had a dollar for every time they mention the people in that esteemed congress of ours, I'd be a very rich man. But what are the people? Do they have leaders? Can they talk in one voice? Can they even go into the polls and vote? Some can, but enough of them can't to let us worry about it. This isn't the first presidential election, and every president, even such incredible buffoons as Rutherford B. Hayes, have been elected by a part of the people. We're going to tell the people something, but Mark Hanna and the Republican Party are going to tell them something else. How are the people going to know what's right?”

“Because we stand for what's right.”

“My word, Bill, that's not enough. Maybe we do, maybe we don't. But how do we get across to the people what we stand for? For every newspaper that's for us, there are twenty against us. We've got four hundred thousand in the campaign chest—maybe we stand to get a few hundred thousand more. The Republicans have six million already—some say ten million—and stand to get millions more. That never happened before. That much money was never collected before in the history of this country to be spent on a presidential campaign. Ten million dollars—why, there was a time when that would run our government for a year, and now it's being poured down the drain to elect William McKinley president. Well, there's a reason for that; things go together; they're connected, Bill, and we have to understand just how they're connected, so we can know how to fight them.”

“What things?” Bryan asked. “The Republicans have always had money. We knew that—we're a people's party, not a Wall Street party.”

“That's right, we are—sure. But still, there are some things. Take this agitation for war with Spain—”

“I'm for Cuban independence!”

“And I am too. But there's more to it than that. On the one hand, we throttle the independence movement in Cuba; we cut off supplies, arms. We let them starve. On the other hand, we move toward war with Spain. That's an indication of something else. Monopoly capitalism in America has become a giant, a bloody, ruthless giant. That's where the ten million dollars comes from. And they're going to start spreading, that's what this Cuban thing amounts to. America isn't big enough any more—the world is the next step. You have to see that coming, Bill, and then you'll see what we're up against in this campaign. It's not only free silver, government by injunction, the rights of farmers and workers and small businessmen; it's that, but it's something else. It's the first real bid by our side to stem this thing that has grown up in our own lifetimes, this thing that's like nothing else the world ever knew. And they know that—and because they know it, they're going to fight us with no holds barred; Inside of that frame, you've got to talk to the people, Bill, and there's only one way we can talk to them.”

“I don't wholly agree,” Bryan said. He was not a constant listener, and Altgeld wondered whether he had heard all he said. “It's going to be a hard fight, but the people are with us. No one likes monopoly, no one likes the trusts. We'll take our case to the people.”

“Sure, we'll take it to them. But with integrity. That's an old-fashioned word, but it works. We can't equivocate, we can't compromise—”

They were words Bryan liked. He nodded savagely. Altgeld sighed and said, “We must stand on our platform, Bill. My god, we must stand there firm as all hell, just firm as all hell.” But afterward, he told Emma, “How much of it meant anything, and how much of it went in and out? He's all right, but this is too big for him. Maybe it's too big for anyone.”