XIII

Meanwhile in New Freedom that tide which overcometh every tide before was rising fast.

When Jael arrived at Liberty, three days behind her bank auditors, Anx. Plaino was not in his window; vibrations of him were in the air. There had just been a collision in the public square between men handing his pamphlets out of sacks and persons calling themselves Leaguers who were in fact—at least the leaders of them were—Wobblies aching for a fight. Plaino’s men had been driven off. Then he had placed them on the steps of his own bank. That was where Jael saw them. She passed them on purpose to receive a pamphlet, which she read as she walked.

The big title was in red ink:

“THE TRUTH IS SORE”

Beneath it a statement in italics, in effect that since the Freemen’s League controlled the press and had refused to print his matter either as news or as advertising at full space rates he was obliged to resort to this method of reaching the public with the facts. The word facts in bold capitals. This was the first of a series of pamphlets. They would be mailed as they came forth to every voter in the state, for the U. S. Mail was still neutral; they could be had also in any quantity on request at the bank. On the back was a photograph of the tombstone; below it a prediction that the missing numeral at the bottom of the stone would be filled in the morning after the next election, in November. “This is not a fact,” he was careful to say. “It is a prediction. Everything else in this pamphlet is fact.” Fact again in capitals.

It was light on the old man’s character that nobody doubted his facts. If he said it was so it was. And not one of his facts was ever disproved. The controversy turned on their meaning and interpretation. Everyone wondered where he had got his information. He knew more about the affairs of the state, the People’s Bank and the League as one whole in three parts than any other person inside or outside, and his sources never failed him.

In the first pamphlet he confined himself to the state owned and co-operative business ventures. He told what the flour mill had cost, which was more than the people knew, and how that cost compared per unit of capacity with the cost of the great flour mills in the country. It was nearly double. Then he told what it was costing to make flour in that mill and what the loss was per barrel. The state would save money to shut it up. He told the same story of the meat packing plant, and gave the exact dates on which thousands of tons of good dressed beef had ben brought home and burned. There was similar treatment of the co-operative stores and lumber yards and of the state creameries.

To Jael’s immense relief there was not a word about the People’s Bank. She wondered at this, and wondered even more after she had read the preliminary report of her auditors. It was available that evening.

The bank was hopelessly insolvent. Moreover, its insolvency involved the finances of the whole state. The state itself was insolvent, in this way. Under Dwind’s law not only the state but also the political sub-divisions, meaning counties, townships, school districts and towns, were required to keep their money on deposit in the People’s Bank. The largest of these public funds was the school fund, and it was gone. It had been loaned away to farmers, to the Freemen’s League, to unknown persons, to the state for its unprofitable business undertakings.

In the bank’s vaults were reams of long over-due post-dated checks, some that might become good in time, thousands that were utterly bad. The books were in a state of chaos. Liabilities appeared as assets.

On warrants representing people’s grain stored in the people’s elevators more money had been loaned than the grain was worth; the price had fallen since it went into storage, and no one had either the authority or the courage to make the farmers sell it and pay off the bank.

There were some blind accounts. One was Account X. All the bank’s bookkeepers knew about this was that Parshall had said it was all right. Account X owed the bank more than a million dollars. Then there was a loan of a million-and-a-half to the Louisiana Company, secured by promissory notes. This, the bank’s bookkeepers said, could be explained only by Mr. Capuchin.

And there was almost no cash in the till.

She sent one of her auditors off to California to question Parshall about Account X, and waited for Capuchin, who had been reported out of town but was coming in to dinner.

He arrived in a humor that was new to her. She was expecting him to look worried. Not at all. He was inflated. Everything about him, his gestures, his edges, the contortions of his mouth in talking, seemed slightly exaggerated; and he had in him some secret which he held to his own advantage. Jael wondered. Was he so infatuated as not to realize the seriousness of the situation? Or was he acting?

It was both. Under attack he experienced an ecstasy of exalted innocence. All his deeds, whatever their character, stood before him gilded in the light of perfect intention. The view intoxicated his mind. It was not enough that he himself should see it. He expected others to see and admire it. Yet it was very frail. In some bare corner of his mind he was aware of its frailty, else he would not have been always so quick and jealous to defend it, would not have defended it with such subtlety, would not have ben so inflamed and unforgiving toward those who declined to accept it.

This was the state in which Jael now observed him. And the impression she got of him that he was acting a rôle was at the same time true. That was another thing.

He had been in a panic about the bank. He could not answer for the effect of its failure upon his Leaguers. His interview with Jael in New York a few days before had been most unsatisfactory. For a moment, when she was so cold and named the condition, which was to see the books, he had thought everything lost. Then suddenly he had veered round and accepted the condition heartily. Here the perfect illustration of one way his mind worked. Not to have accepted her condition would of course have been fatal. On the other hand, there was no reason to suppose that a disclosure of the bank’s condition would not also be fatal. He did not deliberately choose. What prompted him to accept was the precognition of an idea that was yet to appear. He felt it somewhere. For hours afterward he struggled to get hold of it. Then it came to him.

The red card printer who brought to him the advance copy of Plaino’s first pamphlet had said that the second one, not yet in type, would be an attack on the Lothian College people. This information had not impressed him at the time. In talking with Jael he had forgotten to mention it. Now suddenly, in relation to the bank, it became very important. It made it possible to hang the bank on Jael and her Lothians. She would find herself publicly identified with it; her reputation would be bound up with it. Therefore she could not afford to let it fail. She would feel obliged to stand by it. Thus, Plaino had played into his hands.

There was the immediate difficulty that Plaino’s next pamphlet would not be out for a month whereas the bank required help at once. Therefore, it was imperative to know what was in that next pamphlet in order to confront her with it. Ever since his return to Liberty he had been praying, bribing, cajoling the red card printer to get him a look at it, and only this day he had succeeded. The printer had smuggled out the manuscript. It was all that he could have wished it to be.

Now coming to this interview with Jael he had rehearsed himself carefully in what he should say and how he should say it.

Jael was surprised that his first words were, “Well, what do you think of Old Anxiety’s blunderbuss,” when he should have had the bank on his mind, as it was on hers.

“It doesn’t matter what I think of it,” she said. “What are you going to say about it? How does the ‘Herald’ answer it tomorrow?”

“That hasn’t been decided,” he said.

He was helping himself to food and affected an absent manner toward the subject. “That hasn’t been decided,” he said again, having his dinner before him. “I thought we had better confer, talk it over together, so as to present a united front when we came to it.”

She understood that he was talking carefully, with some purpose in view, and waited.

“I’ve seen what’s to go in the next pamphlet,” he said.

She said nothing, though he gazed at her steadily in a way that made her uncomfortable and resentful.

“It’s an attack on you, the Lothian College, all your people here,” he said.

She noticed that he said your people here.

“Have you got it with you?” she asked.

“No, it isn’t in print yet. I’ve seen the printer’s copy.” She waited. “Very interesting,” he said. She waited. “Facts I knew and put out of my mind and some I didn’t know myself,” he said.

“As accurate as the facts in his first pamphlet?” Jael asked.

“So far as I know,” he said. “As to the facts here, he’s got them all straight. How Mr. Dwind was loaned to us by the Lothian College to write the bank’s law and charter, that Lothian College people to the number of forty are in state jobs here, costing nearly two hundred thousand a year, and so on. Also the fact that it was your money bought the ‘Herald.’ I can’t imagine how he got hold of that. He has been bribing people in our midst. Some of our own.”

He became much interested in his food again.

“Anything else?” Jael asked.

“Yes,” he said, pretending to be somewhat reluctant. “He attacks the Lothian College itself. When he comes to that I cannot say how straight his facts are. You would know. And all about this house. He’s got that. A lot of information about the people who’ve been here visiting, especially anarchists. We know what an anarchist is. Most people don’t. The name scares them.”

Now she began to see where he was heading out. Putting her on the defensive.

“What about the Lothian College in particular?” she asked.

“He calls it a school of anarchy,” said Capuchin. “He likes the word. He knows how people take it. Well, that’s nothing, is it? But he’s gone and got hold of some books written by members of the Lothian faculty. Prints extracts from them. One a book against marriage. One against private ownership of land. We’ve got to remember we are dealing with people who get married and own land. I’m afraid that stuff will do us a good deal of harm. Oh, yes, and he reprints from the New York newspapers several years ago the story of the president of the Lothian College publicly at a dinner taking a woman to live with him unmarried.”

“You think that will hurt,” said Jael, commenting.

“I know these people,” he said. “I know about how far you can go with them. The land question alone. You can’t talk about state ownership of land around here, not even in theory. Everybody’s got land. The man who wrote that book is here in one of the state bureaus.” He finished eating. “However,” he said, “everything will come right if only we can keep the bank on its legs.”

Jael was very angry. Putting her and the Lothians on the defensive in front of himself!

“What do you know about Account X?” she asked him, bluntly.

“Oh, you’ve heard from your figure worms?” he said.

“I thought you might be able to tell us something about Account X,” she said, “while we are waiting to hear from Parshall.”

“How are you going to hear from Parshall?”

“I’ve sent a man to see him. They said at the bank he was the man to ask.”

For a moment his eyes wandered.

“I strongly urge you to stop him,” he said. “If Parshall is stirred up he may talk. If the bank begins to be talked about that’s good-bye.” He was thoughtful. “I can tell you all there is to know about that account,” he said. “The money was lost in wheat speculation.” Seeing her look of amazement, he explained. “The first mistake was to lend the farmers too much money on their grain. Then the price began to fall. The Chicago speculators were putting it down. It was Parshall’s idea that we could beat them and put the price back to where it belonged. The motive was all right. We were doing it for the farmers of New Freedom. But the idea was bad. It turned out that way.”

“And the Louisiana Company. What do you know about that?” Jael asked.

This time his eyes did not wander. He was expecting the question.

“They would be suspicious of that,” he said. “I suppose they told you I carry the Louisiana Company around in my pocket. That may appear to be so. It doesn’t belong to me. I have never so regarded it. It’s for the League when the time comes to speak of it. Maybe I ought to have told somebody. I wanted to prove it first. It’s in the gristle yet. You need some imagination to see it.”

He had been speaking injuredly. Then, as he saw it all clearly again, his imagination burgeoned and his voice lifted. The Louisiana Company was all for grace and redemption. It would repay ten-fold every kind of loss the state had suffered. It owned and held under option a vast tract of land in Louisiana, on a river, with a wonderful site for a power dam. The plan had two features. One was to develop hydro-electric power with which to manufacture at very low cost nitrogenous fertilizer, such as New Freedom needed badly, and distribute it to the people without profit. The other feature was a winter colony in the warm south. Every New Freedom farmer and his family to have a bungalow and some irrigated acres there. A refuge from the rigors of the northern winter climate and the means to carry on agriculture through the whole year. Change, besides; the excitement of change. Joyous migrations twice a year to keep them happy.

She questioned him about the land. He had never seen it. The engineers had reported on it. She should see their reports the next day. Others had seen it. All reports were excellent. It was cutover timber land, he admitted, yet to be cleared of the stumps. Nothing had been built or begun. There was only the land and the idea.

This chimera astonished her even more than the explanation of Account X. She was speechless. There he sat, still glowing with the vision, visibly emotional about it. His eyes were hot. His hair, a little long, was brushed straight back over his ears, showing his baby white temples in which the blue veins throbbed. As absurdly meritorious as a school boy from having recited a grand piece. And he was saying, “It’s not to be talked about yet. I’ve denied that I have anything to do with it. That’s necessary.”

Another irrigation scheme, in fact. This very good reason for its not being talked about was unknown to Jael. She had never heard of his two disastrous ventures in irrigation.

For a while neither of them spoke. He did not wish to ask what she had decided to do about the bank, if anything. He wished her to say, and she did.

“My auditors tell me the People’s Bank is insolvent,” she said.

“I knew they would tell you that,” he said.

“I have made up my mind,” she said. “There are two conditions. I will help the bank provided, first, a new board of directors shall be named, to include three practical bankers, and provided, also, that I shall approve of the next president.”

Capuchin spoke slowly, as if he were thinking out loud. “As to the directors... yes... they are named by the legislature. It is in Mr. Dwind’s law that way.... As to the president... he is elected by the directors. That also is according to Mr. Dwind’s law.... I don’t see—”

“I’m not asking you to see,” she said. “I’m laying down conditions. The bank is in my hands, remember. I can shut it up.”

“How?” he asked. And she knew instantly that he had been waiting for her to make this threat. His manner was victorious. “How?” he repeated.

“By demanding the money I have there,” she said. “The bank cannot pay me. It would be obliged to say it was insolvent.”

“You would not dare,” he said.

That was the point he had been coming to all this time. It was true. She had made an empty gesture; also, she had underrated his cunning.

“Or,” she said, “I could simply do nothing and let it shut up in its own way.”

He rose from the table.

“Even if you mean it now,” he said, “you will change your mind. Not on my account. Not that, of course. Not for the League, either. For your own sake.”

That was true. She knew it was true as he was saying it; she had not faced it herself.

“Think about it some more,” he said very affably. “I’ll come in tomorrow evening.”

They shook hands. This was a rite he never omitted, or if he did it was a sign of enmity.

Jael’s emotions were so intensely disagreeable that she became physically uncomfortable. She was ashamed of him and ashamed of herself. “A stultifying experience,” she thought, reflecting on the interview as a whole. Her impulse was to wash her hands or change her clothes. Then she did a thing she had never thought of doing. The resolve formed itself unawares in her mind. It startled her a little, yet she did not pause to examine it.

Capuchin had not been gone more than five minutes when she set forth, walking rapidly. It was a still, cold night. The moon was full. Her mind became tranquil and knew perfectly what it was doing; yet she had not considered what she should say to him and was vaguely wondering how to begin as she rang Anx. Plaino’s door bell.

“Come in!” a voice said. She heard it faintly. It was a loud voice to be heard at all. There were double doors at the entrance vestibule and double windows around the house. It was a square brick dwelling, ugly and unpretentious. Plaino had been a widower for twenty years. He had no children and lived here alone with two servants, a man outside and a woman to keep house. The woman had gone to bed.

The doors were not locked. Jael let herself into the vestibule, which was dark; then into the hall, which was dimly lighted. Plaino’s hat, muffler and overcoat were hanging there on a polished steer’s horn; his rubbers were beneath them. The outer peeling of him, grim and censorious, creased by his daily activities, shapen by his personality. He himself was in a room to the right and called again, “Come in!”

The door was ajar. She pushed it open, and saw only the top of his head. He sat in a Morris chair with his back to the door, reading the Scriptures. Without looking, he said a third time, “Come in!” now with some impatience in his voice. Jael walked around and stood facing him. He took off his glasses, looked at her, and said, “Oh!”

She noticed that he wore about the house an old gray coat out at the elbows. In this state of relaxation he looked very old. A pastel portrait of a woman, probably his wife, and “The Signing of the Declaration of Independence” were the only two pictures in the room.

“I’m Jael Saint-Leon,” she said.

“I know you,” he said. “Push the papers off that chair and sit down.”

She felt a little awe of him. Of old men she knew almost nothing and a man of this kind, old or young, was outside her experience. It had occurred to her to mention the fact that her banker in New York knew him and spoke most excellently of his character. When she came to say it there seemed no point to it. It was unimportant.

She said, “Mr. Plaino, do you know the condition of the People’s Bank?”

“I do,” he said, “and so do you.”

“You know it perhaps much better than I do,” she said.

“Much better,” he said.

“Are you going to attack it?” she asked.

He looked at her for a long time through his glasses, holding them at arm’s length. Then he said, “‘For the Lord hath created a new thing in the earth. A woman shall compass a man.’”

“I didn’t realize,” she said, “how abrupt that question would sound. The reason I ask is this. I want to save the bank if possible. I feel some responsibility for it. It isn’t a question of money. I am willing to put the money in. You know what the question is. I had thought of asking you to take charge of it, or to form a committee of bankers for that purpose, but that seems not to be feasible. There are difficulties in the law. The legislature names the directors and the directors name the president. What I have come to ask you for is advice.”

He kept looking at her through his glasses, holding them far and near. His hands were uncommonly long and thin, hardly wider than the thickness of his wrists. It was not there his strength lay.

“I am going to attack it,” he said.

“Even though I tell you I am willing to help it through.”

“The daughter of David Saint-Leon does not want advice,” he said, thoughtfully. “That is not what she comes to me for. She wants information. They have been telling her she must save their bank. They have been telling her that unless she fills its till again with money it will fail. They speak to her in dread accents of a run. I tell her better. They walk in lies. ‘T’aint that they are afraid of. Their fear is that when they have no more money to lend the people will turn against them.”

“I must be very stupid,” said Jael. “Somewhere I lose the point.”

“This is not a bank like any other bank,” he said. “If it were, Anx. Plaino should not attack it. Never. Shall iron break iron? ‘T’aint natural. ‘T’aint in the writing. What do they say? They say if a run started on their bank they couldn’t last an hour. That’s true. But it can’t happen. When we speak of a run on a bank what do we mean? We mean the depositors get scared and come all at one time and demand their money back. If the bank can’t give them their money it fails. This bank has no money. Its till is empty. Yet I tell you if that fact were published in the newspapers, still there would be no run on the bank. Why not? You want to know why not? Why, because the people already have the money. The bank does not owe the people. The people owe the bank. Can you imagine people coming in a panic all at one time to pay the bank what they owe it?”

“But the bank does owe a great deal of money,” said Jael.

“Not to the people,” he said. “That’s the riddle. Now follow me. To whom does a bank owe money? Any bank? To its depositors. You know that. Very well. But who are the depositors in this bank? Not the people, mind you. You are one. I think you are the only private depositor it has. You are not going to demand your money back, are you? You are not going to start a run on the bank, are you? Who are the other depositors? They are the counties, the towns, the townships, the schools districts, the state itself, all required by law to keep their funds on deposit there. Those funds are gone. The bank is liable for them. Follow me. To whom is it liable? Not to persons. A county is not a person, is it? A town is not a person. The state is not a person. They are political forms, these depositors, with no blood to run cold, no organs of fear, nothing of their own to lose. They are not going to make a run on the bank. Don’t you see what has happened? The counties, the towns, the state—they have been collecting taxes from the people and putting the money—the people’s money—into this bank; and the bank has ladled it out to the people as if it were fable honey. When the people come awake to the fact that it was their own labor, not fable honey, they were beguiled to consume in a delirium of extravagance they will destroy the bank. You cannot stop them. Nobody can. It will be an act of political sanity. Meanwhile there will be no run on the bank. Don’t let them befuddle you on that point. The people have eaten their honey.”

He was looking at her again in that peculiar way, with one eye closed, trying her first through one lens and then the other.

“I’m greatly obliged to you for giving me this view of it,” she said, rising. She held out her hand. The touch of his was limp. He was already adjusting his glasses to their natural use and looking for his place in the Scriptures, lying open on his knee. He called after her, saying: “Slam the outside door so I can hear it.”

“Good night,” she said.

He waited to hear the door slam and then remembered to say good night.

As she walked slowly home it occurred to her that the old man might have had a subtle motive, namely, to turn her from her thought of helping the bank, for if she did help it—that is, put it in funds again so that it could go on lending—its political power would continue. Nevertheless, he had made it logically clear that its problem was primarily political, not financial. Being a state bank, it was supreme. No outside authority could touch it or oblige it to confess its insolvency. And since there were no individual depositors to come clamoring for their money, it could simply stand there with a grand and vacant stare. The people had already got out everything there was in it. The people were debtors, not creditors. How extraordinary!

Her mind was made up.