VI

“You must write it,” said Grinling. “Just that way. Really! You must. I undertake to find you a publisher.” He permitted himself to speak with some enthusiasm.

Fitzjerald spoke, addressing no one directly.

“There is something I miss in these wonderful matters,” he said. “I speak of it with proper humility. Something I never see. The point, in fact. What is it the people of New Fredom now are free to do that they could not have done before? Were they not always free to exercise the rights of a majority? Take the seat of authority by voting themselves there? They wanted only the will and the intelligence to do it and a man to lead them.”

“The people,” said Capuchin, “are always free to cut off the king’s head if they can.”

“‘One, two, three. The king shall headless be.’ So the mummers do it still in Bohemia on Whit-Monday,” said Fitzjerald. “Beheading the image of his thralldom is man’s most exciting activity. He begins historically with the dragon. He hunts the dragon, heroically. It is cornered in a mud hole; its head is chopped off. Still man is not free. The gods rule. One by one he cuts off the heads of the gods. No good. The king rules. Behead the king! The slayer of the king then rules. Off with his head! The proletariat is enthroned. But the proletariat has no head either to rule itself with or to be chopped off. What then? The intelligent fragment rules. Away with the head of intelligent fragment! Success rules. Cut off the head of success! Facts rule. Behead the tyrannical facts! Every kind of head has been cut off. Yet man is not free. Still he has to be ruled. Shall he free himself by cutting off his own head?”

“The world as it was and is and will be, forever, amen,” said Grinling, jeering. Loud speeches annoyed him, especially these.

“The world is fool-proof,” Fitzjerald retorted. “No one can jump off.”

Those who knew Madame had been aware for some moments that a diversion was imminent. Only Capuchin was surprised.

“Ze revolution! Where is ze revolution?” she demanded. “Mr. Grinling has been writing about your revolution and will you tell us about it, please. I listen and listen for ze revolution and I hear nozing but ze elections and ze politics and ze voting. Where is ze revolution?”

Pulling his bench back to the table, Capuchin rested his arms on it and held his hands out with a movement of squeezing a soft, round object.

“Privilege has been overturned, Mrs.—uh—” He thought he had forgotten her name, whereas he had never heard it. He gave it up and went on. “A wicked class government has been destroyed. A state exploited by the railroads, by petty lords, by absent capitalists, has been delivered to the people. The people! Do you understand? Those whose labor creates the wealth and who now for the first time have the light of the body in their eyes.”

“Ach! Zeir wealz and zeir bodies,” said Madame, scornfully. “In zeir bodies zey are swine, oh, such swine!” Her voice and gestures expressed disgust, amusement and despair, as if she had been thinking of impossible children. “But zeir souls, zey are lovely. Have you done nozing for zeir souls, Mr. Capuchin?”

“I think you are talking nonesense,” said Capuchin.

Madame frowned slightly at his rudeness and subsided, murmuring to herself, “Ze anamals! And wiz such lovely souls.”

Capuchin was on the point of addressing her again, to mollify her, thinking he had produced an ill effect, when Jael deflected him.

“Folkmote,” she said. “Have you been using the word picturesquely, or do you really call them so.”

“That’s what they are,” said Capuchin.

“I like it,” said Jael. “Where did you get it?”

“From Kropotkin,” said Fitzjerald.

The effect of his cutting in with those two words was unexpected. Capuchin rose slowly to his feet and pointed at him. He was very angry, and when he was angry pools of saliva gathered in the corners of his mouth.

“That person,” he said, “that—that—hollyhock, with no provocation but his own bad nature, has been insulting me ever since we met in the street. I can no longer endure his society.” He stood there holding his attitude, still pointing at Fitzjerald, waiting for what should happen.

“Lillibridge, embrace him,” said Jael in a shriek of delight. “Kiss him! What joy when they let their angry passions go!”

Miss Lillibridge patted him gently on the back, as she might have passed the butter, without looking.

He looked at Jael to see if she were making ridicule of him. But she was smiling at him earnestly, and said: “We quarrel like this all the time. It is our pastime. Angus says he is sorry whether he is or not and that let’s you down. More of the folkmotes. Come. What are your problems now?”

He remembered his errand. Here was a direct invitation to state it. So, although the feathers of his dignity were standing, he sat down again and addressed himself exclusively to Jael.

“Funds,” he said, bluntly. “That’s our great problem.”

And he began to explain why.

The League itself was all right. It was supported by the annual dues. Only, the post-dated check was in one way a great nuisance. They couldn’t get rid of it, for it had become a habit, an institution, peculiar to the temperament of the people. They would buy anything with a post-dated check. As the membership grew, and it was growing very fast, the League always had more postdated checks than money.

Take a matter for example. There was but one important newspaper in the state. The League’s paper was of course a League organ. They could understand how that was and that only the members read it. Well, they needed access to public opinion in general. This paper he was speaking of was a regular newspaper, with an Associated Press franchise and all, and was of course a foe of the League. But the owner was secretly in a terrible panic. He saw what was coming, and he wished to sell out. If the League owned that newspaper it would have all the press there was in the state. Think what that would mean! And the League had in its box enough post-dated checks, if only it could turn them into money, to buy the paper.

However, that was not the main thing. The crucial matter was perhaps easier to handle on the plane of finance. He did not know. He had come for advice.

The legislature was in recess during his absence. That was a precaution. When it came to sit again it would pass at once a bill authorizing the state to build six great grain elevators and a flour mill. Very good. But to build such things you had to have more than a statute. You had to have money. And the state had no money to build them with. So, the question: would it be possible to sell a bond issue in the east—bonds guaranteed principal and interest by the state of New Freedom, that was to say, by the people themselves? What could be better security for an investor?

All this about the bonds he uttered rapidly, without a pause, having rehearsed it carefully in his mind; and now he looked expectantly at Jael. How easy it would be for her to say: “How much? One, two, three millions? I’ll buy them myself.” Instead she seemed very thoughtful for a time and said: “Mr. Dwind is our economist. He knows. Dwind, do you think the state of New Freedom could sell a bond issue in the east?”

“I do not,” he said.

“Why?” asked Capuchin.

“I speak coldly,” said Dwind. “Not as I feel but as I think. In the first place, your New Freedom is experimental. In the second place, you are socialistic, putting the state into business and turning the capitalists out. Therefore, you would not find a banking house willing so much as to touch your bonds.”

Grinling said Dwind was wrong. If a banking house could not be found to act, then let the bonds be offered by the state of New Freedom, on direct advertising. He would put the influence of “The People’s Witness” behind them. All the liberal opinion in the country would rally to their support.

“Unfortunately,” said Dwind, “liberal opinion does not flourish in the pocket, least of all in the pockets of liberals.”

While they argued De Grouse came to the table and stood by Capuchin, whose face was sour.

“As I understand it, you’ve got the legislature, the governor, the bench, the whole state government, including the power to write anything you like into the constitution?”

“Right,” said Capuchin.

“And you are proposing to put the state into the elevator and milling business for the people’s benefit?”

“Right,” said Capuchin again.

“Then why not put it into the banking business for the same reason? Set up a state bank. Require all the funds of the state, the towns, the counties, the townships, the school boards, to be kept there. Then you will have a bank of your own that can cash your post-dated checks, lend money to the League, finance your elevators and mills, anything, provided of course you take care to make it legal.”

“We can make anything legal,” said Capuchin.

“In that case there is no problem about funds,” said De Grouse. “It’s perfectly simple.... I’m going, Jael.”

He waved good-night and disappeared. For several minutes no one spoke, and then—

“De Grouse is right,” said Dwind. “He would be, you know. That is, I mean finance runs in his family as an instinct. That same idea was coming to me. Credit must be an essential part of your structure, Capuchin. Let the people control their own credit. Why should they buy it from private bankers, seeing that they themselves produce the wealth on which it rests?”

“I wonder,” said Capuchin, “if we have anybody who could write such a law.”

He was still thinking how much easier it would be for Jael to buy the bonds. He had no financial understanding; therefore he was slow to get the meaning of this new idea.

“I will write it for you,” said Dwind. “I’ll be glad to do it. Great God! Here is the beginning of the end of capitalism forever. And this country, this last refuge of capitalism, was the one in which the perfect opportunity was meant to appear.”

No one had ever seen him so excited before.

Miss Lillibridge went to bed. Madame disappeared. Dr. Rabba had slipped away unnoticed. Jael, Fitzjerald and Semicorn listened while Dwind, assisted by Grinling, conducted Capuchin through a foreshortened course in finance. Dwind wrote three outline draughts of the law, the second twice as long as the first, and the third twice as long as that; then he decided he should have to go back with Capuchin to make a survey of conditions. It was important to make no mistakes.

Capuchin had one anxiety. This evidently was going to take some time. That matter of the newspaper was urgent. The owner might get over his panic or find another buyer. He stated this dilemma several times and once directly to Jael, but she let it drop.

So the destiny of New Freedom was plotted.

As they were breaking up, Semicorn put out his hand to Capuchin, saying, “I’ve accepted your offer.”

Capuchin said, “Fine!” He said it three times. He had forgotten what the offer was. Seeing this the young man said, “I mean I’m going back with you.”

“Yes, of course you are,” said Capuchin, then remembering. “If we don’t get the big newspaper we’ll find something else. We’ll need you somewhere.”

They were passing through the doorway—the men. Jael was still seated at the table.

“Oh, Angus,” she called, and Fitzjerald went back. They were alone.

“Tell me something about Kropotkin,” she said.

He was surprised.

“You know Kropotkin by heart.”

“Never mind. I’m asking you. Not what he wrote. What about him? What was his own meaning?”

“Oh, why he lived in Jones street. A glooming Russian soul. I don’t know why for sure. I never thought of taking him up in that light. I’ll do it if you say.”

“Then it isn’t the same reason in every case, is it? And you may be wrong about me?”

“Quite,” he said, wondering why she was so serious. There was a silence. He broke it. “Kropotkin was that fearful enigma of civilization—a sensitive sympathetic, who, unable to endure the sight of struggle for advantage in this silly business of existence, turns nihilist, as Kropotkin did, and meditates violence. He may be religious and afraid to blame God. Or he may in one breath deny God and propose to destroy him. In any case he must fix the blame, so he blames laws, institutions and men for the order of facts. But you never know which is innate: the sense of pity or the impulse to violence. They are related as yes and no, compulsion and inhibition, one to justify the other or one to compensate the other. God and monster both. The killer may feel also a great tenderness for life. All of which comes of thinking. Kropotkin was one of those who made plausible use of the historical method. Unable to prove what he wished to be true from the visible facts of human behaviour he selected historical facts to prove his thesis that mutual aid had been of greater importance than struggle as a principle; and when his mutual aid leagues, having delivered themselves from oppression, turned out invariably to be oppressors of others, that was merely because they forgot the principle in which he himself preferred to believe.... You are not listening.”

“No,” said Jael, “I am not. You are too long. That’s peevish, isn’t it? I’m sorry. I wanted to know only why Mr. Capuchin was so angry when you mentioned Kropotkin.”

“Vanity in its naive form,” said Fitzjerald. “He has few sources, and one of them was rudely discovered. Those of us who are sophisticated in knowledge reveal our sources because if we try to conceal them we are sure to be found out. Put one of us in a company where he knows it to be safe and he will find himself forgetting to mention his sources. I should. One who has read little will say of a book he has never seen or heard of before that he has read it, or thinks he has read it, or doesn’t remember, whereas one who has read much, and knows that everyone knows it, may easily say he has never read Shakespeare or the Bible, may even feign not to have read them, to be eccentric. It is all the same thing.”

“Angus, you can’t help being nice. Why do you hold yourself out to be disagreeable?”

“I merely hold myself out to be the ultimate radical, believing that people are as they seem. Whether they dream their dreams or make them up, invent their masks or get born with them on, it is all the same.”

They said good-night.