Now the winds keened from the mountains, and snow fell. Abednego Danner,
the magnificent Abednego Danner, was carried to his last resting-place,
the laboratory of nature herself. His wife and his son followed the
bier; the dirge was intoned, the meaningless cadence of ritual was
spoken to the cold ground; a ghostly obelisk was lifted up over his
meagre remains. Hugo had a wish to go to the hills and roll down some
gigantic chunk of living rock to mark that place until the coming of a
glacier, but he forbore and followed all the dark conventions of
disintegration.
The will was read and the bulk of Hugo's sorry gains was thrust back
into his keeping. He went into the attic and opened the black trunk
where the six small notebooks lay in oilpaper. He took them out and
unwrapped them. The first two books were a maze of numbered experiments.
In the third a more vigorous calligraphy, a quivering tracery of
excitement, marked the repressed beginning of a new earth.
He bought a bag and some clothes and packed; the false contralto of his
mother's hymns as she went about the house filled him with such despair
that he left after the minimum interval allowed by filial decency. She
was a grim old woman still, one to whom the coming of the kingdom to
Africa was a passion, the polishing of the coal stove a duty, and the
presence of her unfamiliar son a burden.
When he said good-by, he kissed her, which left her standing on the
station platform looking at the train with a flat, uncomprehending
expression. Hugo knew where he was going and why: he was on his way to
Washington. The great crusade was to begin. He had no plans, only
ideals, which are plans of a sort. He had told his father he was making
the world a better place, and the idea had taken hold of him. He would
grapple the world, his world, at its source; he would no longer attempt
to rise from a lowly place; he would exert his power in the highest
places; government, politics, law, were malleable to the force of one
man.
Most of his illusion was gone. As he had said so glibly to his father,
there were good men and corrupt in the important situations in the
world; to the good he would lend his strength, to the corrupt he would
exhibit his embattled antipathy. He would be not one impotent person
seeking to dominate, but the agent of uplift. He would be what he
perceived life had meant him to be: an instrument. He could not be a
leader, but he could create a leader.
Such was his intention; he had seen a new way to reform the world, and
if his inspiration was clouded occasionally with doubt, he disavowed the
doubts as a Christian disavows temptation. This was to be his
magnificent gesture; he closed his eyes to the inferences made by his
past.
He never thought of himself as pathetic or quixotic; his ability to
measure up to external requirements was infinite; his disappointment lay
always (he thought) in his spirit and his intelligence. He went to
Washington: the world was pivoting there.
His first few weeks were dull. He installed himself in a pleasant house
and hired two servants. The use to which he was putting his funds
compensated for their origin. It was men like Shayne who would suffer
from his mission. And such a man came into view before very long.
Hugo interested himself in politics and the appearance of politics. He
read the _Congressional Record_, he talked with everyone he met, he went
daily to the Capitol and listened to the amazing pattern of harangue
from the lips of innumerable statesmen. In looking for a cause his eye
fell naturally on the problem of disarmament. Hugo saw at once that it
was a great cause and that it was bogged in the greed of individuals. It
is not difficult to become politically partisan in the Capitol of any
nation. It was patent to Hugo that disarmament meant a removal of the
chance for war; Hugo hated war. He moved hither and thither, making
friends, learning, entertaining, never exposing his plan--which his new
friends thought to be lobbying for some impending legislation.
He picked out an individual readily enough. Some of the men he had come
to know were in the Senate, others in the House of Representatives,
others were diplomats, newspaper reporters, attachés. Each alliance had
been cemented with care and purpose. His knowledge of an enemy came by
whisperings, by hints, by plain statements.
Congressman Hatten, who argued so eloquently for laying down arms and
picking up the cause of humanity, was a guest of Hugo's.
"Danner," he said, after a third highball, "you're a sensible chap. But
you don't quite get us. I'm fighting for disarmament--"
"And making a grand fight--"
The Congressman waved his hand. "Sure. That's what I mean. You really
want this thing for itself. But, between you and me, I don't give a rap
about ships and guns. My district is a farm district. We aren't
interested in paying millions in taxes to the bosses and owners in a
coal and iron community. So I'm against it. Dead against it--with my
constituency behind me. Nobody really wants to spend the money except
the shipbuilders and steel men. Maybe they don't, theoretically. But
the money in it is too big. That's why I fight."
"And your speeches?"
"Pap, Danner, pure pap. Even the yokels in my home towns realize that."
"It doesn't seem like pap to me."
"That's politics. In a way it isn't. Two boys I was fond of are lying
over there in France. I don't want to make any more shells. But I have
to think of something else first. If I came from some other district,
the case would be reversed. I'd like to change the tariff. But the
industrials oppose me in that. So we compromise. Or we don't. I think I
could put across a decent arms-limitation bill right now, for example,
if I could get Willard Melcher out of town for a month."
"Melcher?"
"You know him, of course--at least, who he is. He spends the steel money
here in Washington--to keep the building program going on. Simple thing
to do. The Navy helps him. Tell the public about the Japanese menace,
the English menace, all the other menaces, and the public coughs up for
bigger guns and better ships. Run 'em till they rust and nobody ever
really knows what good they could do."
"And Melcher does that?"
The Congressman chuckled. "His pay-roll would make your eyes bulge. But
you can't touch him."
Hugo nodded thoughtfully. "Don't you think anyone around here works
purely for an idea?"
"How's that? Oh--I understand. Sure. The cranks!" And his laughter ended
the discussion.
Hugo began. He walked up the brick steps of Melcher's residence and
pulled the glittering brass knob. A servant came to the door.
"Mr. Danner to see Mr. Melcher. Just a moment."