"YOU see, Senator," said the Hon. Maxwell, "that the party is not agreed
on these bills you are preparing. Take for example that bill, I
understand you are the author of it, on public health. As we understand
the matter, it is going to work great hardship on the retail dealer, and
besides, pardon me, it is so full of fads and absurdities that it will
make the party the laughing stock of the state. And there is that bill
on public lands and investigating old entries. That will stir up an
unnecessary lot of trouble and help to disrupt the party. You must
remember, Senator, that while you call yourself independent in politics,
you allowed your nomination to be made by the party, and you are one of
us and have no right to split the party into factions. More than half
these bills you are advocating in the _News_ are of questionable value
and all of them, it seems to us, are calculated to make enemies in our
own ranks. The thing for you to do, it seems to us, is to stand pat.
Wages are good and the people are generally contented. Prosperity is
beginning to come back and it is poor policy to stir up matters. I've
been through a lot of campaigns and I want to say to you, Senator, that
I know the people pretty well, sir, and the people are beginning to feel
sore over all this reform business. They are beginning to feel that they
can't turn around or do a thing without someone claiming the right to
pass a law telling 'em how to do it. The effect of the reform measures
you are advocating will be to disrupt the party."
The Hon. Maxwell paused and his two friends nodded assent after his
somewhat lengthy talk. Paul's first impulse was to get tremendously mad
and tell the visitors to get out, as politely as it could be done in a
hurry. Then his sense of humour and of right proportion came to save
him.
Maxwell he knew fairly well to be one of the most narrow minded type of
politicians, honest enough so far as that went, but without a shred of
real patriotism or any faintest glimmer of sense on matters of public
welfare. His little soul revolved in a jerky and contracted orbit about
the party. This orbit never took him out of sight of the "party." Under
good men and bad in office, under defeat and under victory, under the
varying vicissitudes of fortune that his meagre political life had known
for forty years, he had never gone back on the party. He had held one or
two minor offices in the course of his career and was deeply grateful to
the party for recognising his right to an office. But when the party
ignored him and put in some other creature, Maxwell never complained. To
change the figure from the satellite and the orbit to a living organism,
Maxwell was like Bill Syke's dog; no matter how the party treated him,
he licked its hand just the same and showed the same loyalty and
affection for the party when it kicked him down stairs as when it fed
him at the pie counter. In forty years Maxwell had not learned a new
idea or grown an inch in political stature. He was a party man and was
proud of it. His one great virtue was that he was honest. He voted
regularly for all sorts of thieves and boodlers and scoundrels nominated
by the party, but he had in some marvelous fashion known only to his
Maker, kept himself clear of all personal bribery and political
trickery.
All this Paul knew quite well, and he was not able to despise Maxwell on
account of his one redeeming factor. But the slavery that had tied
Maxwell body and soul all his life was so foreign to Paul's whole makeup
that he could not understand it and he had to repress his natural desire
to explode over Maxwell's talk. But he did manage to say quite calmly:
"Mr. Maxwell, I appreciate your plea for the party, but I don't see
things as you do. While I accepted the nomination, as you say, at the
hands of the party, I distinctly outlined my views at the time and made
no pledges that bind me either to the party or to measures, if these
measures conflict with my own sense of what is for the best interests of
the people. I think the people who elected me understand that I am free
to act in that way. And, frankly, that is the way I intend to act. There
may be some mistakes in some of these bills. It would be strange if
there wasn't. But I believe they are for the good of all the people or,
of course, I would not urge them."
Maxwell shook his head doubtfully.
"This reform business has gone too far. My friends here know that. Judge
Livingston can tell you how the people out his way feel."
"Yes, sir," said Livingston in a dry, machine-made manner; "Senator, the
people in our district are growing restive over the reform business.
They want to be let alone. We have too many laws now, laws that
interfere with our personal liberty." (The judge grew eloquent.) "Laws
that attempt to dictate to us what we shall eat and drink and where to
go, and I for one say for my district that these continual efforts to
legislate on personal matters will not only disrupt the party, but lead
to a counter revolution that will surprise the so-called reform bosses
of the state."
Paul looked at the judge steadily. If he could have looked at him with
an X-ray eye he would have seen a small sample whisky bottle in the
judge's coat pocket, one of the adjuncts of "personal liberty" the judge
was defending. Not seeing that, Paul did size up the man for about what
he was and answered him accordingly.
"As to legislation that affects personal liberty, these bills you say
you have come to see me about deprive no man of any liberty he has a
right to possess. But I am ready to confess they do deprive some persons
of the liberty to steal the people's land and water power. They do aim
to take away the liberty of certain food makers to poison the people,
and of certain other food sellers to give the people short weight. Some
of these acts are also designed to take from certain persons the liberty
to demoralise youth, as for example the measure a number of us hope to
get through the legislature regulating bill boards and indecent posters.
For years a little company of men has insulted all the people with these
public monstrosities. I am frank to say I have no scruples in depriving
them of the liberty to do so any more. And as to dictating to the people
what they should eat and drink, don't you think the saloon and the
patent medicine men and the adulterated food makers and the dirty food
sellers have been dictating to the people centuries enough, to give us
some excuse for depriving them of their long monopoly to deal out
sickness and death at wholesale? When you talk of 'personal liberty,' it
is well to remember the fact that no man has any right to a personal
liberty which results in evil to his neighbour or to society."
The judge turned very red, and was on the point of replying. But
Maxwell broke in.
"This is aside from the question, Senator. The main fact you ignore. The
main fact is that what you are planning to do will split the party."
Paul lost his temper.
"Let it split, then! I don't worship the party! What is the party by the
side of the people?"
Maxwell looked shocked. I think he really felt as he looked. Paul could
not have said anything more treasonable.
"Senator, you will regret those words. Mark me. You will regret it. One
of the things I was going to say was------" Maxwell lowered his voice
and looked around. "I was going to say that you have it in your power so
to shape your own future that the governorship would come to you in two
years, or the national senatorship. The party would be willing to
reward a man like you------"
Paul exploded again. "Governorship! Senatorship!" he almost shouted
while Maxwell looked apprehensively at the open door.
"Do you think I care about them as reward for political slavery?" Then
he suddenly realised how useless it was to let a man like Maxwell
understand.
"Gentlemen," he said good naturedly, "excuse me. The occasion does not
call for excitement. I understand your purpose in coming to see me. It
will save your time and mine to say that I shall not change my plans to
press these bills even if the result is to disrupt the party. And you
are as free to say that as I expect to be in my editorial this evening."
Maxwell nervously interrupted.
"You are committing political suicide, Mr. Douglas."
"That's better than hari kari, eh?" said Douglas with a smile.
Maxwell stared. He had heard of hari kari perhaps, but did not know
whether it was the name of a new type of airship or a health food. He
went away with his two friends, firmly convinced, however, that the
editor of the _News_ was on the road to political destruction.
After Paul had written his editorial for the _News_ he was not certain
himself that he had not really done what Maxwell predicted. He had
certainly never spoken so plainly and even bluntly on the issues of the
campaign, and he knew perfectly well that the Maxwell political type
dominated thousands of voters, men who resent any act in politics which
threatens to disarrange the smooth running of the machine. In politics
it is almost as easy to raise a howl against reform as it is to raise a
cry for it. There are thousands of party men in this republic who as
long as they can make their bread and butter out of machine politics
don't care what price the people have to pay for their bread and butter.
When Paul went home that night he did what he had done for twenty-one
years. The minute he was in the hall, he said, "Esther?" with an
interrogation point after the name.
Esther was upstairs in the upper hall. She replied in a subdued tone,
"Yes, here I am," and Paul ran up three steps at a time to greet her.
Marriage may be a failure with some people, but it certainly was not
with Paul and Esther who had remained lovers all these years, simply
because they had made their married life a joyful, sacred and deeply
Christian compact, a genuine union of heart and head and soul. Paul
wrote love letters to his wife, sent her flowers and in general courted
her in much the same fashion Esther had known when Paul was a struggling
reporter. And Esther kept herself bonny for his sake, entered in
whole-souled fashion into his ambitions and was not afraid to debate
politics with him and keep womanly. One great secret of their joyful
married life was found in the perfect frankness each showed the other,
and also in the blessed fact that each of them had almost a perfect
physical constitution, not frayed nor tortured with nerves and
sensitiveness.
The minute Paul saw Esther he knew some unusual event had occurred. Paul
was quick to detect the presence of any new thing because Esther's
expressive face could never hide a great secret. Paul was on the point
of asking what it was when his eye was attracted by a commotion going on
behind the door of a cedar linen closet at the end of the hall. There
was a sudden wrenching and tearing of cloth, then a great Jovian sized
laugh, the door burst open and a huge figure stepped out into the hall
where Esther stood laughing hard.
"George Randall!" cried Paul, and the next minute he and his old pupil
were in each other's arms.
"As big as ever," cried Paul, as he stepped back to look at his
unexpected visitor.
"Bigger," said George, grinning. "Mrs. Douglas, if you'll get a needle
and thread I'll mend my coat. You see, I just stepped in there to
surprise you a minute and I backed up against a hook and it caught right
under my collar and tore half of it off. What makes you make your
closets so small?"
While Paul was overwhelming Randall with greetings and questions, and
Mrs. Douglas was sewing on the medical missionary's coat collar, Randall
was explaining his unexpected appearance in Milton.
"You see I've been transferred to Feu Chou Fu, the new hospital there.
I've been called home by the board to help raise funds for the plant. I
left so sudden I didn't have time to write you and I wasn't certain
either that I would come here. But my father! Do you know about what's
happened to him?"
"No," said Paul. "I knew he'd been travelling with your mother for her
health, but I haven't seen either of them for two years since they went
abroad the last time."
"My father is going to be a Christian! He and mother never took kindly
to my going as a medical missionary, but last year they stopped to see
me at Shaowu. I didn't know it at the time, but father was tremendously
impressed with the missionary situation. Then over at Ponasang, father
was taken ill, and what should happen to him providentially but he had
to go to our hospital there. Dr. Wilder fixed up his body, and what is
more he reached his soul, and father wrote me just before I left Feu
Chou Fu that he had found the light after living in the dark all his
life, and at the close of his letter said he and mother were on their
way home to Milton and wanting to know how he could best serve the cause
of Christ. I hardly slept all the way over to Vancouver for the joy of
lying awake thinking of it. A cable from father reached me this morning
from San Francisco, saying they would be at Milton next week. They
sailed by way of Auckland and Honolulu. So I thought I might as well
come and board with Mrs. Douglas and you until they arrived. You can
open a can of something, and that will do for me, and I can hang myself
up in the closet if you are short of beds.
"But won't father and I have a jolly time when he gets back? I won't ask
him for more than half a million to start with to put into the surgical
department. Poor old pater! He has never had any fun with his old money.
I'm going to help him have the time of his life now spending it for
Christ and the Kingdom. My! But won't we have a jolly lot of fun with
that money now?"
That evening at the supper table George Randall simply fascinated the
whole company with his stories of Chinese life and the victories of the
gospel. Esther invited in her brothers, Walter and Louis. Felix Bauer
had never seen anyone like Randall, and he sat the whole evening
absorbed, listening to the recital of as marvellous a story of conquest
as any to be found in the chapters of Caesar, Frederick the Great or
Napoleon. And what a conquest! Not war and pillage and pitiful man's
ambition for power, but conquest of that great territory called the
human heart.
"My, but I wish you folks could have seen what I saw there months ago at
Shantung; five thousand people stood up in a public square in front of
one of the old temples, no one knows how old, and threw thousands of
idols into a heap on the ground and burned them, and then sang in their
own language to our tune, 'Anywhere With Jesus I Can Safely Go.' For
five days, much of the time through a pouring rain, more than five
thousand people met to listen to the gospel of light and life and
healing. We rigged up a sort of field hospital, using part of the temple
for a clinic, and Walter and Rice and Colfax and I cut off legs and arms
and heads of no end of diseased folks and operated for compound cataract
and every known and unknown disease, and the Lord was with us. We didn't
lose a case, and you never saw or heard such sights in prosaic
money-loving America. Why, those people are born again! That whole
district is simply awake out of several centuries' sleep. I have the
consent of the high powers in that district to negotiate over here for a
lot of machinery and stuff for agricultural purposes. And those people
are putting up a church at Angfu that will beat any church in Milton for
work and worship. Think of that, beloved! In a country that has stood
still for twenty-five centuries, worshipping the past and bowing down to
nineteen thousand filthy gods, you can hear 'My Faith Looks Up to Thee'
and 'All Hail the Power of Jesus' Name' sung by congregations so big
that they have to meet out doors. And yet I understand from reading one
or two high-browed religious magazines printed in this country that the
old gospel has lost its power and that the world must have a new brand
of religion of the hermetically canned variety suited to the elevated
culture and new thought of the times. But the old gospel seems to do the
work in China all right. At any rate it makes real men and women out of
animals, and changes sinners into saints. I don't know any test of a
religion bigger than that, do you?"
Paul asked one or two questions and started Randall off on an account of
a missionary tour into the unexplored parts of west China. Then he spoke
of the contemptuous criticism offered by a certain type of globe
trotters he had met on his way home. In telling about this his great
form seemed to tower up and his great head with its mild blue eyes
looked sternly gigantic with righteous indignation.
"There was a bunch of naval officers coming over on the _Zarina_ with
us, and some of them were quite fine fellows. But there was one officer
who used to get out with the author of a book on the Eastern situation,
and they would spend hours criticising the missionaries and laying the
blame on them for all the Boxer troubles and the hatred of foreigners
generally.
"I didn't know until later on that the reason for the distinguished
author's feelings against missionaries was because some of his own
personal immoralities had been rebuked by a missionary in Pao Ting Fu
and he had been mad ever since.
"His friend, the naval officer (and I was thankful he didn't belong to
our country), took great pride in describing his conquests with the fair
sex in the different quarters of the globe where he had been on his war
vessel.
"Think of that, dearly beloved! Here was a man who when he touched at a
foreign port had no more exact knowledge of the work done by
missionaries than the knowledge he gained from going to a high-priced
ball or champagne supper held a few feet from the shore, expressing the
most emphatic opinions concerning the value of a foreign missionary's
life and influence! He changed his costume several times a day. And I
learned from a midshipman who volunteered the information that the
following comprises the regular and compulsory list of clothes a naval
officer in this Christian age is obliged to possess and solemnly wear on
the proper occasions. Want to hear it?"
Louis, who had of late been begging his father to let him try for a
place in a naval academy, eagerly said, "Yes, tell us, Mr. Randall."
"Well, here is a list of this human being's clothes that he must,
according to the naval rules, lug around the world with him:
"A double-breasted frock coat of dark navy blue cloth with a sleeve
stripe of gold lace a quarter of an inch wide and a gold star, which
indicates the line officer. 'Service coat of blue cloth and with the
same sleeve lace and a gold foul anchor on the collar.' 'White service
coat with gold shoulder marks indicating the rank.' 'Evening dress coat
of blue cloth with gilt buttons and sleeve lace.' 'Blue evening dress
waistcoat with gilt buttons.' 'Whiteevening dress coat.' 'White mess
jacket.' 'Full dress trousers of blue cloth and gold lace a quarter-inch
wide.' 'Undress blue trousers, plain.' 'White trousers and many of
them.' 'Service overcoat of heavy blue cloth.' 'Cloak of blue cloth.' 'A
black mackintosh.' 'Blue uniform cap.' 'White uniform cap.' 'Cork or
pith helmet.' 'Sword with sword knot.' 'Leggings.' 'A suit of rain
clothes.' 'Black satin or silk, four-in-hand tie.' 'Plain black tie for
evening dress uniform.' 'White gloves.' 'Black shoes.' 'White shoes.'"
In the pause that followed this reading, Louis looked disappointed.
"Would I have to get all these and take care of them if I went into the
navy?"
"That's right, my boy, and not only get 'em but wear 'em at the proper
times. My! Think of how you would have to hustle yourself out of one
suit into another in order not to break some rule of naval etiquette."
"And think of Louis," said Helen, "who can't find his clothes in the
morning when he has only one suit to look after, keeping track of all
that. Why, that is enough to give a girl nervous prostration, to say
nothing of a boy."
"I guess I don't want to enter the navy," said Louis in disgust.
Everybody roared, and then Randall said gravely:
"Do you know, beloved, that while I pray the Lord every day to keep me
from judging my fellow men, I just couldn't for the life of me help
passing judgment on a civilised custom which keeps alive all this war
fuss and feathers and asking men made in God's image to strut around in
all this gilt and lace toggery when immortal creatures are starving to
death by the million for the bread of life. And I just couldn't keep
still when day after day I heard on deck this naval fashion plate
girding at men and women whose plain shoes he wasn't worthy to black.
One day I up and gave him some real information about missionaries. He
had to listen, and when I got through, to my great joy, a plainly
dressed gentleman corroborated what I said and went me several better,
saying that the real awakening of China and Turkey and Japan and India
was due to the great work done by the missionaries. During his talk it
turned out he was the British Consul at Hong Kong, quietly travelling
home by way of America. I haven't had anything do me more good in years
than that little incident."
The Douglas family stayed up late that night and two nights following.
Then Randall went to his father's, to the great regret of all.
Two weeks after that Felix Bauer, who was getting more out of this visit
at his friend's than he had ever experienced before, went into the
library and sat down by the long table. The family was scattered, Paul
at his office, Esther in the kitchen, Walter visiting some old friends
out at the college, Louis not yet home from his uncle's. Felix picked up
a magazine and began to read. He was fairly started in a story when
Helen came in. Bauer instantly arose and bowed in his slow but pleasant
manner. Helen went over to a favourite seat of hers in the corner of the
library and sat down, looking at Bauer earnestly.