At this point they
invariably became excited, lost their equanimity, and swore. Then
they fell back on their faith in Ratcliffe: if any man could pull
them through, he could; after all, the President must first reckon
with him, and he was an uncommon tough customer to tackle.
Perhaps, however, even their faith in Ratcliffe might have been
shaken, could they at that moment have looked into his mind and
understood what was passing there. Ratcliffe was a man vastly
their superior, and he knew it. He lived in a world of his own and
had instincts of refinement. Whenever his affairs went
unfavourably, these instincts revived, and for the time swept all his
nature with them. He was now filled with disgust and cynical
contempt for every form of politics. During long years he had done
his best for his party; he had sold himself to the devil, coined his
heart's blood, toiled with a dogged persistence that no day-labourer
ever conceived; and all for what? To be rejected as its candidate;
to be put under the harrow of a small Indiana farmer who made no
secret of the intention to "corral" him, and, as he elegantly
expressed it, to "take his hide and tallow." Ratcliffe had no great
fear of losing his hide, but he felt aggrieved that he should be
called upon to defend it, and that this should be the result of
twenty years' devotion. Like most men in the same place, he did
not stop to cast up both columns of his account with the party, nor
to ask himself the question that lay at the heart of his grievance:
How far had he served his party and how far himself? He was in no
humour for self-analysis: this requires more repose of mind than he
could then command.
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