Senate whom he called the Good, the True, and the Beautiful might ignore him socially, when these men needed help for a local bill they had to consult Senator Wharton. For his political savings bank, where record is kept of services to political associates, was full to overflowing. He was wary and drew on his account but sparingly. And the Thompson woman kept her own hours in the pension office, and one day, in a sportive moment, she told the assistant commissioner, under whom she was supposed to work, that if she could ever remember his name she would have him dismissed. Her speech was unwise, for she forgot—if she ever knew—that when a man passes his fortieth year his moral lapses are not for the woman, but for a woman, and he is easily irritated.
Tom Wharton's business interests grew. Whatever he touched he gilded. He worked far into the night, and reached the point where it took four glasses of whiskey to steam up his boilers for work in the morning. He ate breakfast dictating letters across his egg, and had little time for speech-making. But his secretary sent out three or four extracts from the Congressional Record every year, in which were Wharton's speeches demanding a tariff on hides and butter, or sounding the alarm against the trusts. Occasionally he fanned one of these out of the thin air of the lonesome Senate chamber, but usually asked leave to print and went about his business. His fortune crept past one million, jumped past two, and a chalky pallor stole into his face.
Still, for all his success, Tom Wharton recognized his limitations. He cherished a venomous envy for Senator Felt, who, Wharton fancied, knew the difference between brands of champagne and understood what Wharton called the "time-table of a wine-list" at dinner. So, naturally, Wharton boasted of the superiority of whiskey and reviled those who did not appreciate the intricate points of its quality.
"Bob," said Wharton to his private secretary one day, when the Senate galleries were filled to hear Felt discourse upon a minor clause in the tariff bill under consideration, "what a poser that fellow is—always before the public, always on dress parade. I'd strangle with surprise if I'd ever see that long-tailed coat of his unbuttoned. Do you suppose he sleeps in it? Can you imagine him in his night-shirt?"
The secretary laughed, and Wharton, who was looking over the stenographer's work before signing his letters, went on:
"What I don't see is how he holds his job. He can't do anything. I'll bet he don't know the fourth assistant postmaster-general from Adam's off ox. He hasn't got a bill through, except some local bills, since he came. That sophomore twaddle he's reciting this afternoon will have about as much to do with the passage of the tariff bill as a painted toot from one of the painted angels over there in that gingerbread library building that he struts around so much about. And yet a lot of old hens cluck and scratch worms for the Great Senator Felt whenever he stretches his neck and hollers."
To which Senator Felt made fair return in kind. To a crony in a Boston club Senator Felt said: "He is a thrifty fellow, that Wharton. He has saved from his salary of $5,000 a year a fortune reaching into the millions." The two men laughed. The mask of Felt's face did not wrinkle or quiver as he added: "He is a subject for the biologist, for he retains the strength of a mastodon, revives the manners of a cave man, and preserves the morals of a hyena."
Ostensibly Felt and Wharton were friends. Yet their mutual politeness was inspired by the jealousy that breeds punctiliousness in men more surely than it is bred by friendship or esteem. The fires of jealousy between Wharton and Felt could never be quenched, for Felt had youth and culture, and Wharton had power and courage.
One year well along in the nineties there arose in Wharton's State a political movement which puzzled him. The first shock of the movement made the little bolts and screws and cogs of the Wharton machine quiver, and the second shock, coming as it did in a presidential year, snapped a hundred levers. The defeated candidates filled Wharton's mail with letters, asking for repairs and damages and for expert opinion. The constant habit of considering the affairs of the wracked
