Jeff, writing hard on his book to tell men they were prisoners and had
to get free, was tremendously happy. He thought he saw the whole game
now, the big game these tiny issues reflected in a million mirrors. You
were given life and incalculable opportunity. But you were allowed to go
it blind. They never really interfered with you, the terrible They up
there: for he could not help believing there was an Umpire of the game,
though nobody, it seemed, was permitted to see the score until long
afterward, when the trumpery rewards had been distributed. (Some of them
were not trumpery; they were as big as the heavens and the sea.) He
found a great many things to laugh over, sane, kind laughter, in the way
the game was played there in Addington. Religion especially seemed to
him the big absurd paradox. Here were ingenuous worshippers preserving a
form of observance as primitive as the burnt-offerings before a god of
bronze or wood. They went to church and placated their god, and swore
they believed certain things the acts of their lives repudiated. They
made a festival at Christmas time and worshipped at the manger and
declared God had come to dwell among men. They honored Joseph who was
the spouse of Mary, and who was a carpenter, and on the twenty-sixth of
December they nodded with condescension to their own carpenter, if they
met him in the street, or they failed to see him at all. And their
carpenter, who was doing his level best to prevent them from grinding
the face of labour, himself ground the face of his brother carpenter if
his brother did not heartily co-operate in keeping hours down and
prices up. And everybody was behaving from the prettiest of motives;
that was the joke of it. They not only said their prayers before going
out to trip up the competitor who was lying in wait to trip up them;
they actually believed in the efficacy of the prayer. They glorified an
arch apostle of impudence who pricked bubbles for them--a modern
literary light--but they went on blowing their bubbles just the same,
and when the apostle of impudence pricked them again they only said:
"Oh, it's so amusing!" and blew more. And even the apostle of impudence
wasn't so busy pricking bubbles that he didn't have time to blow bubbles
of his own, and even he didn't know how thin and hollow his own bubbles
were, which was the reason they could float so high. He saw the sun on
them and thought they were the lanterns that lighted up the show. Jeff
believed he had discovered the clever little trick at the bottom of the
game, the trick that should give over to your grasp the right handle at
last. This was that every man, once knowing he was a prisoner, should
laugh at his fetters and break them by his own muscle.
"The trouble is," he said, at breakfast, when Mary Nellen was bringing
in the waffles, "we're all such liars."
The colonel sat there in a mild peaceableness, quite another man under
the tan of his honest intimacy with the sun. He had been up hoeing an
hour before breakfast, and helped himself to waffles liberally, while
Mary Nellen looked, with all her intellectual aspirations in her eyes,
at Jeff.
"No, no," said the colonel. He was conscious of very kindly feelings
within himself, and believed in nearly everybody but Esther. She, he
thought, might have a chance of salvation if she could be reborn,
physically hideous, into a world obtuse to her.
"Liars!" said Jeff mildly. "We're doing the things we're expected to do,
righteous or not. And we're saying the things we don't believe."
"That's nothing but kindness," said the colonel. Mary Nellen made a
pretence of business at the side table, and listened greedily. She would
take what she had gathered to the kitchen and discuss it to rags. She
found the atmosphere very stimulating. "If I asked Lydia here whether
she found my hair thin, Lydia would say she thought it beautiful hair,
wouldn't you, Lyddy? She couldn't in decency tell me I'm as bald as a
rat."
"It is beautiful," said Lydia. "It doesn't need to be thick."
Jeff had refused waffles. He thrust his hands in his pockets and leaned
back, regarding his father with a smile. The lines in his face, Lydia
thought, fascinated, were smoothed out, all but the channels in the
forehead and the cleft between his brows. That last would never go.
"I am simply," said Jeff, "so tickled I can hardly contain myself. I
have discovered something."
"What?" said Lydia.
"The world," said Jeff. "Here it is. It's mine. I can have it to play
with. It's yours. You can play, too. So can that black-eyed army Madame
Beattie has mobilised. So can she."
Anne was looking at him in a serious anxiety.
"With conditions as they are--" said she, and Jeff interrupted her
without scruple.
"That's the point. With conditions as they are, we've got to dig into
things and mine out pleasures, and shake them in the faces of the mob
and the mob will follow us."
The colonel had ceased eating waffles. His thin hand, not so delicate
now that it had learned the touch of toil, trembled a little as it held
his fork.
"Jeff," said he, "what do you want to do?"
"I want," said Jeff, "to keep this town out of the clutch of Weedie
Moore."
"You can't do it. Not so long as Amabel is backing him. She's got
unlimited cash, and she thinks he's God Almighty and she wants him to be
mayor."
"It's a far cry," said Jeff, "from God Almighty to mayor. But Alston
Choate is going to be nominated for mayor, and he's going to get it."
"He won't take it," said Anne impulsively, and bit her lip.
"How do you know?" asked Jeff.
"He hates politics."
"He hates Addington more as it is."
They got up and moved to the library, standing about for a moment, while
Farvie held the morning paper for a cursory glance, before separating
for their different deeds. When Farvie and Anne had gone Jeff took up
the paper and Lydia lingered. Jeff felt the force of her silent waiting.
It seemed to bore a hole through the paper itself and knock at his brain
to be let in. He threw the paper down.
"Well?" said he.
Lydia was all alive. Her small face seemed drawn to a point of
eagerness. She spoke.
"Alston Choate isn't the man for mayor."
"Who is?"
"You."
Jeff slowly smiled at her.
"I?" he said. "How many votes do you think I'd get?"
"All the foreign vote. And the best streets wouldn't vote at all."
"Why?"
She bit her lip. She had not meant to say it.
"No," said Jeff, interpreting for her, "maybe they wouldn't. That's like
Addington. It wouldn't stand for me, but it would be too well-bred to
stand against me. No, Lyddy, I shouldn't get a show. And I don't want a
show. All I want is to bust Weedon Moore."
Lydia looked the unmovable obstinacy she felt stiffening every fibre of
her.
"You're all wrong," she said. "You could have anything you wanted."
"Who says so?"
"Madame Beattie."
"I wish," said Jeff, "that old harpy would go to Elba or Siberia or the
devil. I'm not going to run for office."
"What are you going to do?" asked Lydia, in a small voice. She was
resting a hand on the table, and the hand trembled.
"It's a question of what I won't do, at present. I won't go down there
to the hall and make an ass of myself talking history and be dished by
that old marplot. But if I can get hold of the same men--having
previously gagged Madame Beattie or deported her--I'll make them act
some plays."
"What kind of plays?"
"Shakespeare, maybe."
"They can't do that. They don't know enough."
"They know enough to understand that old rascal's game, whatever it is,
and hoot with her when she's done me. And she's given me the tip, with
her dramatics up there on the platform, and the way they answered.
They're children, and they want to play. She had the cleverness to see
it. And they shall play with me."
"But they won't act Shakespeare," said Lydia. "They only care about
their own countries. That's why they love Madame Beattie."
"What are their countries, Lydia?"
"Greece, Italy, Poland, Russia--oh, a lot more."
"Aren't they voting here in this country?"
"Why, yes, ever so many of them."
"Then," said Jeff, "this is their country, and this is their language,
and they've got to learn some English plays and act them as God pleases.
But act them they shall. Or their children shall. And you may give my
compliments to Madame Beattie and tell her if she blocks my game I'll
block hers. She'll understand. And they've got to learn what England was
and what America meant to be till she got on the rocks."
"Jeff," said Lydia, venturing, "aren't you going into business?"
"I am in business," said Jeff. "It's my business to bail out the
scuppers here in Addington and bust Weedie Moore."
"If you went into business," said Lydia, "and made money you could--"
"I could pay off my creditors? No, I couldn't, Lydia. I could as easily
lift this house."
"But you could pay something--"
"Something on a dollar? Lydia, I've been a thief, a plain common thief.
I stole a chicken, say. Well, the chicken got snatched away somehow and
scrambled for, and eaten. Anyway, the chicken isn't. And you want me to
steal another--"
"No, no."
"Yes, you do. I should have to steal it. I haven't time enough in my
whole life to get another chicken as big and as fat, unless I steal it.
No, Lydia, I can't do it. If you make me try, I shall blow my nut off,
that's all."
Lydia was terrified and he reassured her.
"No. Don't worry. I sha'n't let go my grip on the earth. When I walk now
I'm actually sticking my claws into her. I've found out what she is."
But Lydia still looked at him, hungry for his happiness, and he
despairingly tried to show her his true mind.
"You mustn't think for a minute I can wipe out my old score and show you
a perfectly clean slate with a nice scrollwork round it. Can't do it,
Lydia. I sha'n't come in for any of the prizes. I've got to be a very
ordinary, insignificant person from now on."
That hurt her and it did no good. She didn't believe him.
Not many days from this Jeff started out talking to men. He frankly
wanted something and asked for it. Addington, he told them, if they
built more factories and put in big industries, as they were trying to
do, was going to call in more and more foreign workmen. It was going to
be a melting-pot of small size. That was a current catchword. Jeff used
it as glibly as the women of the clubs. The pot was going to seethe and
bubble over and some demagogue--he did not mention Weedie--was going to
stir it, and the Addington of our fathers would be lost. The business
men looked at him with the slow smile of the sane for the fanatic and
answered from the fatuous optimism of the man who expects the world to
last at least his time. Some of them said something about "this great
country", as if it were chartered by the Almighty to stand the assaults
of other races, and when he reminded them that Addington was not trying
to amalgamate its aliens with its own ideals, and was giving them over
instead to Weedon Moore, they laughed at him.
"What's Weedon Moore?" one man said. "A dirty little shyster. Let him
talk. He can't do any harm."
"Do you know what he's telling them?" Jeff inquired.
They supposed they did. He was probably asking them to vote for him.
"Not a bit of it," said Jeff. "He'll do that later. He's telling them
they hold the key of the treasury and they've only to turn it to be
inside. He's giving no credit to brains and leadership and tradition and
law and punishment for keeping the world moving. He's telling the man
with the hod and the man with the pickaxe that simply by virtue of the
hod and the pickaxe the world is his: not a fraction of it, mind you,
but the earth. To kick into space, if he likes. And kick Addington with
it."
They smoothed him down after one fashion or another, and put their feet
up and offered him a cigar and wanted to hear all about his prison
experiences, but hardly liked to ask, and so he went away in a queer
coma of disappointment. They had not turned him out, but they didn't
know what he was talking about. Every man of them was trying either to
save the dollar he had or to make another dollar to keep it warm. Jeff
went home sore at heart; but when he had plucked up hope again out of
his sense of the ironies of things, he went back and saw the same men
and hammered at them. He explained, with a categorical clearness, that
he knew the West couldn't throw over the East now she'd taken it aboard.
Perhaps we'd got to learn our lesson from it. Just as it might be it
could learn something from us; and since it was here in our precincts,
it had got to learn. We couldn't do our new citizens the deadly wrong of
allowing the seeds of anarchy to be planted in them before they even got
over the effects of the voyage. If there were any virtue left in the
republic, the fair ideal of it should be stamped upon them as they came,
before they were taught to riot over the rights no man on earth could
have unless men are going to fight out the old brute battle for bare
supremacy.
Then one day a man said to him, "Oh, you're an idealist!" and all his
antagonists breathed more freely because they had a catchword. They
looked at him, illuminated, and repeated it.
One man, a big coal dealer down by the wharves, did more or less agree
with him.
"It's this damned immigration," he said. "They make stump speeches and
talk about the open door, but they don't know enough to shut the door
when the shebang's full."
It was the first pat retort of any sort Jeff had got.
"I'm not going back so far as that," he leaped at the chance of
answering. "I don't want to wait for legislation to crawl along and shut
the stable door. I only say, we've invited in a lot of foreigners. We've
got to teach 'em to be citizens. They've got to take the country on our
plan, and be one of us."
But the coal man had tipped back in his chair against the coal shed and
was scraping his nails with his pocket knife. He did it with exquisite
care, and his half-closed eyes had a look of sleepy contentment; he
might have been shaping a peaceful destiny. His glimmer of
responsiveness had died.
"I don't know what you're goin' to do about it," he said.
"We're going to put in a decent man for mayor," said Jeff. "And we're
going to keep Weedon Moore out."
"Moore ain't no good," said the coal man. "But I dunno's he'd do any
harm."
The eyes of them all were holden, Jeff thought. They were prisoners to
their own greed and their own stupidity. So he sat down and ran them
into his book, as blind custodians of the public weal. His book was
being written fast. He hardly knew what kind of book it was, whether it
wasn't a queer story of a wandering type, because he had to put what he
thought into the mouths of people. He had no doubt of being able to sell
it. When he first came out of prison three publishing firms of the
greatest enterprise had asked him to write his prison experiences. To
one of these he wrote now that the book was three-quarters done, and
asked what the firm wanted to do about it. The next day came an
up-to-date young man, and smoked cigarettes incessantly on the veranda
while he asked questions. What kind of a book was it? Jeff brought out
three or four chapters, and the young man whirled over the leaves with a
practised and lightning-like faculty, his spectacled eyes probing as he
turned.
"Sorry," said he. "Not a word about your own experiences."
"It isn't my prison experience," said Jeff. "It's my life here. It's
everybody's life on the planet."
"Couldn't sell a hundred copies," said the young man. Jeff looked at him
in admiration, he was so cocky and so sure. "People don't want to be
told they're prisoners. They want you to say you were a prisoner, and
tell how innocent you were and how the innocent never get a show and the
guilty go scot free."
"How do you think it's written?" Jeff ventured to ask.
"Admirably. But this isn't an age when a man can sit down and write what
he likes and tell the publisher he can take it and be damned. The
publisher knows mighty well what the public wants. He's going to give it
to 'em, too."
"You'd say it won't sell."
"My dear fellow, I know. I'm feeling the pulse of the public all the
time. It's my business."
Jeff put out his hands for the sheets and the censor gave them up
willingly.
"I'm frightfully disappointed," he said, taking off his eyeglasses to
wipe them on his handkerchief and looking so babyishly ingenuous that
Jeff broke into a laugh. "I thought we should get something 'live out of
you, something we could push with conviction, you know. But we can't
this; we simply can't." He had on his glasses now, and the
all-knowingness had come mysteriously back. His eyes seemed to shoot
arrows, and clutch and hold you so that you wanted to be shot by them
again. "Tell you what, though. We might do this. It's a crazy book, you
know."
"Is it?" Jeff inquired.
"Oh, absolutely. Daffy. They'd put it in the eccentric section of a
library, with books on perpetual motion and the fourth dimension. But if
you'd let us publish your name--"
"Decidedly."
"And do a little preliminary advertising. How prison life had undermined
your health and even touched your reason, so you weren't absolutely--you
understand? _Then_ we'd publish it as an eccentric book by an eccentric
fellow, a victim of prison regulations."
Jeff laid his papers down on the table beside him and set a glass on
them to keep them from blowing away.
"No," said he. "I never was saner in my life. I'm about the only sane
man in this town, because I've discovered we're all mad and the rest of
'em don't know it."
"That very remark!" said the young man, in unmixed approval. "Don't you
see what that would do in an ad? My dear chap, they all think the other
man's daffy."
Jeff carried the manuscript into the house, and asked the wise young
judge to come out and see his late corn, and offered him a platter of
it if he'd stay to supper. And he actually did, and proved to be a very
good fellow indeed, born in the country, and knowing all its ways, only
gifted with a diabolical talent for adapting himself to all sorts of
places and getting on. He was quite shy in the face of Anne and Lydia.
All his cockiness left him before their sober graces, and when Jeff took
him to the station he had lost, for the moment, his rapier-like action
of intellect for an almost maudlin gratitude over the family he had been
privileged to meet.
Anne and Lydia had paid him only an absent-minded courtesy. They were on
the point of giving an evening of folk-dancing, under Miss Amabel's
patronage, and young foreigners were dropping in all the time now to ask
questions and make plans. And whoever they were, these soft-eyed aliens,
they looked at Jeff with the look he knew. To them also he was The
Prisoner.