The Prisoner Part 43

"Oh, Weedie's working Amabel and telling the mill hands they're great fellows and very much abused and ought to own the earth. Weedie wants their votes."

"Then Weedie is up for office? Amabel told me so, but I didn't think Addington'd stand for it. Time was when, if a man like Weedie had put up his head, n.o.body'd have taken the trouble to bash it. We should have laughed."

"We don't laugh now," said Choate gravely. There was even warning in his voice. "Not since Weedie and his like have told the working cla.s.s it owns the earth."

"And doesn't it?"

"Yes. In numbers. It can vote itself right into destruction--which is what it's doing."

"And Weedie wants to be mayor."

"G.o.d knows what he wants. Mayor, and then governor and--I wouldn't undertake to say where Weedie'd be willing to stop. Not short of an amba.s.sadors.h.i.+p."

"Choate," said Jeffrey cheerfully, "you're an alarmist."

"Oh, no, I'm not. A man like Weedie can get anywhere, because he's no scruples and he can rake in mere numbers to back him. And it's all right. This is a democracy. If the majority of the people want a demagogue to rule over them, they've a perfect right to go to the devil their own way."

"But where's he get his infernal influence? Weedie Moore!"

"He gets it by telling every man what the man wants to hear. He gets hold of the ignorant alien, and tells him he is a king in his own right.

He tells him Weedie'll get him shorter and shorter hours, and make him a present of the machinery he runs--or let him break it--and the poor devil believes him. Weedie has told him that's the kind of a country this is. And n.o.body else is taking the trouble to tell him anything else."

"Well, for G.o.d's sake, why don't they?"

"Because we're riddled with compa.s.sion, I tell you. If we see a man poorer than we are, we get so apologetic we send him bouquets--our women do."

"Is that what the women here are doing?"

"Oh, yes. If there's a strike over at Long Meadow they put on their furs and go over and call on a few operatives and find eight living in one room, in a happy thrift, and they come back and hold an indignation meeting and 'protest'."

"You're not precisely a sentimentalist, are you?" said Jeff. He was seeing Choate in the new Addington as Choate presented it.

"No, by George! I want to see things clarified and the good old-fas.h.i.+oned virtues come back into their place--justice and common-sense. Compa.s.sion is something to die for. But you can't build states out of it alone. It makes me sick--sick, when I see men getting dry-rot."

Jeff's face was a map of dark emotion. His mind went back over the past years. He had not been made soft by the nemesis that laid him by the heels. He had been terribly hardened in some ways, so calloused that it sometimes seemed to him he had not the actual nerve surface for feeling anything. The lambent glow of beauty might fall upon him unheeded; even its lightnings might not penetrate his sh.e.l.l. But that had been better than the dry-rot of an escape from righteous punishment.

"You know, Choate," said he, "I believe the first thing for a man to learn is that he can't dodge penalties."

"I believe you. Though if he dodges, he doesn't get off. That's the other penalty, rot inside the rind. All the palliatives in the world--the lying securities and false peace--all of them together aren't worth the muscle of one man going out to bang another man for just cause. And getting banged!"

Jeff was looking at him quizzically.

"Where do you live," said he, "in the new Addington or the old one?"

Choate answered rather wearily, as if he had asked himself that question and found the answer disheartening.

"Don't know. Guess I'm a non-resident everywhere. I curse about Addington by the hour--the new Addington. But it's come, and come to stay."

"You going to let Moore administer it?"

"If he's elected."

"He can't be elected. We won't have it. What you going to do?"

"Nothing, in politics," said Alston. "They're too vile for a decent man to touch."

Jeffrey thought he had heard the sound of that before. Even in the older days there had been some among the ultra-conservative who refused to pollute their ideals by dropping a ballot. But it hadn't mattered much then. Public government had been as dual in its nature as good and evil, sometimes swaying to the side of one party, sometimes the other; but always, such had been traditionary influence, the best man of a party had been nominated. Then there was no talk of Weedon Moores.

"Do you suppose Weedie's going on with his circus-ground rallies?" he asked.

"They say not."

"Who?"

"Oh, I've kept a pretty close inquiry afoot. I'm told the men won't go."

"Why not?"

"Madame Beattie won't let them."

"The devil she won't! What's the old witch's spell?"

"I don't know. Esther--" he caught himself up--"Mrs. Blake doesn't know.

She only knows, as I tell you, the men come to the house, and talk things over. And I hear from reliable sources, Weedie summons them and the men simply won't go. So I a.s.sume Madame Beattie forbids it."

"It's not possible." Jeff had withdrawn his gaze from the old playground and sat staring thoughtfully at his legs, stretched to their fullest length. "I rather wish I could talk with her," he said, "Madame Beattie.

I don't see how I can though, unless I go there."

"Jeff," said Alston, earnestly, "you mustn't do that."

He spoke unguardedly, and now that the words were out, he would have recalled them. But he made the best of a rash matter, and when Jeff frowned up at him, met the look with one as steady.

"Why mustn't I?" asked Jeff.

It was very quietly said.

"I beg your pardon," Choate answered. "I spoke on impulse."

"Yes. But I think you'd better go on."

Alston kept silence. He was looking out of the window now, pale and immovably obstinate.

"Do you, by any chance," said Jeff, "think Esther is afraid of me?"

Choate faced round upon him, immediately grateful to him.

"That's it," he said. "You've said it. And since it's so, and you recognise it, why, you see, Jeff, you really mustn't, you know."