"You want something of course, every last one of you, even Darrow,"
resumed Vetch, with his charming smile. "I can safely a.s.sume that if you didn"t want something, you wouldn"t be here. Good Lord, if a man so much as bows to me in the street without asking a favour, I begin to think that he is either a half-wit or a ne"er-do-well."
"At least I want nothing for myself," laughed Stephen, a trifle sharply.
"Nor does Darrow, G.o.d bless him!--nor, for the matter of that, does Judge Page. I"ve got nothing to give you that you would take, and so you are wishing Berkeley on me for the penitentiary board." The gleam of humour was still in his eyes and the drollery in his expressive voice.
"We are seeking this for the penitentiary, not for Mr. Berkeley. He is the man you need."
"For a hobby, yes. That"s all right, of course, but, my dear young sir, you can"t run the business of a state as a hobby any more than you can administer it as a philanthropy."
"Perhaps. But can you administer it successfully without philanthropy?"
At this Darrow turned with a smile. "Can"t you see that he is fooling with you?" he said. "Prison reform is one of his fads--that and the rights of the indigent aged and orphans and animals and any other mortal thing that has to live on what he calls the stones of charity. He knows why you came, and he likes you the better because of it."
"Gershom and I have had a word or two about that board," resumed Vetch; and as he stopped to strike a match, Stephen noticed that the cigar he held was of a cheap and strong brand. "Between the Legislature on one side and that bunch of indefatigable lobbyists on the other, I shan"t be permitted presently to appoint the darkey who waits on my table." The cigar was lighted now, and to Stephen"s sensitive nostrils the air was rapidly becoming too heavy. Oddly enough, he reflected, nothing had "placed" Vetch so forcibly as the brand of that cigar.
"That," observed the young man briefly, "is the penalty of political office."
"So long as I was merely a dark horse," said Vetch, "I was afraid to pull on the curb; but now that I"ve won the race, they"ll find that I"m my own master. Won"t you smoke?"
Stephen shook his head. "Not now. There is always the next race to be considered, I suppose."
The Governor"s rugged, rather heavy features hardened suddenly until they looked as if they were formed of some more durable substance than flesh. Under the thick sandy hair his eyes lost their blueness and appeared as gray as Stephen had once thought them. "Have you ever heard," he asked with biting sarcasm, "that I was easy to manage and that that was why certain people put me in office?"
"Yes, I"ve heard that." As the young man replied, Darrow turned from the window and looked at him attentively.
"And may I ask what else you have heard?" inquired Vetch.
Stephen laughed and coloured. "I"ve heard that it was becoming difficult to do anything with you."
"Because I have the people behind me?"
"Well, because you think you have the people behind you."
Vetch leaned forward with a confiding movement, and flicked the ashes of his objectionable cigar on the immaculate sleeve of Stephen"s coat.
Yet, even in the careless gesture, a breath of freshness and health, of mental and physical cleanliness, seemed to emanate like an invigorating breeze from his robust spirit. "Of course I admit," he said thoughtfully, "that we are obliged to have some kind of party organization to begin with. There must be method and policy and all sorts of team-pulling and log-rolling until you get started. That kind of thing is useful just as far as it helps and not a step farther. I won my fight as an Independent--and, by George, I"ll remain an Independent!
I"ve got the upper hand now. I am strong enough to stand alone. If any party on earth thinks it can manage me--well, I"ll show it that I can be my own party!"
Was it true, what they said of him,--that success had already gone to his head, that the best way to get rid of him was to give him a political rope with which he might hang himself? Or was there some solid foundation of fact in his bl.u.s.tering a.s.sumption of power? Was he actually a force that would have to be reckoned with in the future? From a ma.s.s of confused impressions Stephen could gather nothing clearly except his inability to form a definite opinion of the man. On the one side was the weight of prejudice, of preconceived judgment; and on the other he could place only the effect of a personal magnetism which was as real and as intangible as light or colour.
"Do you think that is possible?" he asked sceptically. "In a democracy like ours is any man so strong that he can stand alone?"
"Well, of course he is not alone as long as he has the support of the majority."
"You may have this support--I neither affirm nor deny it--but upon what does it rest? What do you offer the people that is better than the principles or the promises of the old parties? I heard you speak once, but you did not answer this question--to my mind the only question that is vital. You talked a great deal about humanizing industry--a vague phrase which might mean anything or nothing, since humanity covers all the vices as well as all the virtues of the race. Benham could use that phrase as oratorically as you do, for it rolls easily off the tongue and commits one to nothing."
Vetch"s face lost suddenly its rigid gravity, as if he had suffered a rush of energy to the brain. His eyes became blue again, and as keen as the blade of a knife.
"I believe, and the people who are with me believe, that I can make something out of the muddle if I am given a chance," he replied. "Oh, I know that the reactionaries are in the saddle now--that they have been ever since they had the war as an excuse to mount! But I know also that you can no more drive out by law the spirit of liberalism from the American mind than you can drive out nature with a pitchfork. For a little while you may think you have got the better of it; but it will crop out in spite of you. Now, I am a part of returning nature, of the inevitable rebound toward the spirit of liberalism. In the thought of the people who voted for me, I stand for the indestructible common sense of the American mind. I am one of the first signs of the new times."
"And you believe that you prove this," asked Stephen frankly, "by turning over your power of appointment to a group of self-interested politicians? You show your ability to govern by evading the first requirement of good government--that there should be honest and able men in control of public offices?"
A flicker came and went in the blue eyes. "I told you the other day,"
answered Vetch in a low voice, "that I used the tools at my command, and I tell you now that I am sometimes forced to use rotten ones. People say that I am an opportunist; but who has ever discovered any other policy that deals with life so completely? They say also that I am without public conscience--another name for opinions that have crystallized into prejudices. The truth is that the end for which I work seems to me vastly more important than the methods I use or the instruments that I employ."
It was the familiar chicanery of the popular leader, the justification of expediency, that Stephen had always found most repugnant as a political theory; and while he drew back, repelled and disgusted, he asked himself if the national conscience, the moral integrity of the race, was in the keeping of demagogues?
"I am curious to know," he remarked after a moment, "how you are able to justify the sacrifice of what I regard as common honesty in public affairs?"
To his surprise, instead of answering directly, Vetch put a personal question. "Then you think I am not honest? Darrow wouldn"t agree with you."
At this Darrow turned from the window. "Perhaps he doesn"t mean what we do," he said quietly. "I"ve seen honest men that I knew ought to have been in prison."
"I am speaking of course of the doctrines you advocate," answered Stephen. "That seems to me to be, in the jargon of the reformer, somewhat unethical. Can you, I question, achieve anything important enough to compensate for what you sacrifice?"
Darrow turned again with his dry laugh. "You speak as if public honesty, by which I reckon you mean clean elections and unsold offices, were something we had actually possessed," he said.
"Oh, I know the old proceedings were bad enough," replied Stephen, "but I am trying to find out how the Governor expects to make them better.
You understand that I am trying merely to see your point of view--to get at the roots of your theory of government. What you tell me will never find its way to the public."
"I realize that," said Vetch gravely, and he added with a quick glance at Darrow: "Do you think if I were not honest that I"d talk to you so frankly?"
Stephen smiled. "It might be. The political coat has many colours. I don"t mean to be rude, you know, but one good turn in frankness deserves another."
"I like you the better for that." A cl.u.s.ter of fine lines appeared at the corners of the Governor"s laughing eyes. "But, once for all, you must get rid of your false impressions of me, and see me as a fact, not as a kind of social scarecrow. First of all, you think I am an extremist--well, I am not. I am merely a man of facts. I see the world as it is and you see it as you wish it to be--that is the difference between us. I have lived with realities; I know actual conditions--and you know only what you have been told or imagined. Oh, I admit that you saw an edge of reality in the trenches; but, after all, life in the trenches was as abnormal as life in the movies. Each represents an extreme. What you know of average human life, of hunger and pain and labour, could be learned in an academy for young ladies. Yet you imagine that it is experience! You have lived so long in your lily-pond, with the rushes hemming you in, that when you hear all the frogs croaking on the same note, you think complacently, "that is the voice of the people". Why, I tell you, man, you are so ignorant of the conditions in this very town, that Darrow could take you out and show you things that would make you feel like Robinson Crusoe!"
Stephen turned eagerly to the old man at the window. "I am ready for you, Mr. Darrow."
Darrow nodded with a reluctant a.s.sent. "I"ve got my Ford around the corner," he answered. "If you would like to go up town with me I can show you a thing or two that might interest you."
"You mean the conditions in this city?"
"The conditions in all cities. They differ only in the name of the town."
"He will show you a little--just a little--of what getting back to peace means," said Vetch earnestly. "By next winter it will be worse, of course, but it has already begun. The rate of wages is falling--for wages always fall first--and the cost of living is still as high as in war times. Rents are going up every day, Darrow can tell you more about the speculation in rents than I can, and the housing of the working-cla.s.ses, both white and coloured, is growing worse. We shall soon be facing the most serious problem of the system under which we live, the problem of the unemployed. Already it is beginning. Darrow was telling me just before you came in of a man in one of the houses where he has been working--a returned soldier too--who has walked the streets for weeks in search of work. He has been unable to pay his rent, so of course he is obliged to move somewhere, if he can find a place to move into. Oh, I realize perfectly what you are going to say! The brief prosperity of the war still envelops the labouring man in your mind; and you are preparing to remind me of the lace curtains and victrolas of yesterday. Yes, I admit that lace curtains and victrolas are not necessities. It was a case where nature cropped out in the wrong spot.
Even the working-man may have suppressed desires, you see, and lace curtains and victrolas may stand not only for the improvidence of the poor, but for the neurasthenic yearnings of the rich. Talk about the economy of Nature! Why, nothing in the universe, not even the civilization of man, has ever equalled her indecent prodigality!"
As the man"s words poured out in his rich, deep voice, Stephen stared at him in a silence which reminded him humorously of the pause in church before the sermon began. Was this the reason of Vetch"s influence and authority--this flow of ideas, as from a horn of plenty, that left the listener both charmed and bewildered?
"I admit it all," rejoined the young man, "except that you have discovered the remedy."
The Governor laughed and settled back in his big leather-covered chair.
"You think that I blow my own horn too loudly," he continued, "but, after all, who knows how to blow it half so well as I do? For the same reason some over-sensitive nerve of yours may wince at my behaviour at times, my lack of dignity or reserve; but have I ever lost a vote--I put it to you plainly--or the shadow of a vote by an occasional resort to spectacular advertising? It pays to advertise in politics, we all know that!--but it was honest advertising since I never failed to deliver the goods. I started out to prove my strength and to flay my opponents, and you tell me, you group of black-coated conservatives, that I make myself ridiculous because I strike an att.i.tude. The people laughed--but, by George, they laughed with me! Oh, I know you think that I am wandering from my point; but I haven"t forgotten your question, and I am going to answer it, if you will give me time. You ask me what I believe--"
"If you could tell me in few words and plainly."
"Well, first of all, I make no pretence. I do not promise to work miracles. I do not, like your conventional candidates, talk in plat.i.tudes. I do not undertake to achieve a regeneration of politics out of unregenerate human nature. As long as we have cherries we shall have blackbirds; as long as we have politics we shall have politicians. I acknowledge the good and the bad, and all that I promise is to get as good results as I can out of the mixture. Definitely I stand for a progressive reorganization of society--for a fairer social order and a practical system of cooperative industry, the only logical method of increasing production without reducing the labourer to the old disorganized slavery. I believe in the trite formula we workers preach--in the eight-hour day, the old age pension, which is only the inevitable step from the mother"s pension, the gradual nationalization of mines and railroads. I believe in these things which are the commonplace of to-morrow; but it is not because of my beliefs that the people follow me. It is something bigger than all this that catches the crowd. What the people see in me is not the man who believes, but the man who acts. I stand to them not for words--though you and Benham think I"ve made my way by a gift of tongue--but for deeds--for things performed as well as planned. Other men can tell them what they want. My hold over them is that they feel I can get them what they want--a very big difference! Oh, I use words, I know, like the rest. I have read a few books, and I can talk as well as any political parrot of the lot when I get started. But the words I use are living words, if you notice them. I talk always about the things that I can do, never about the things that I think. Well, that is my secret--my pose, if you prefer--to present my argument to the crowd as an act, not as an idea. There are plenty of imposing statues standing around. What they see in me is a human being like themselves, one who wants what they want, and who will fight to the last ditch to get it for them."