Part 45 (1/2)

Fulkerson laughed. ”Telepathy--clear case of mind transference. Better see March, here, about it. I'd like to have it in 'Every Other Week.' It would make talk.”

”Perhaps it might set your people to thinking as well as talking,” said the colonel.

”Well, sir,” said Dryfoos, setting his lips so tightly together that his imperial stuck straight outward, ”if I had my way, there wouldn't be any Brotherhood of Engineers, nor any other kind of labor union in the whole country.”

”What!” shouted Lindau. ”You would sobbress the unionss of the voarking-men?”

”Yes, I would.”

”And what would you do with the unionss of the gabidalists--the drosts--and gompines, and boolss? Would you dake the righdt from one and gif it to the odder?”

”Yes, sir, I would,” said Dryfoos, with a wicked look at him.

Lindau was about to roar back at him with some furious protest, but March put his hand on his shoulder imploringly, and Lindau turned to him to say in German: ”But it is infamous--infamous! What kind of man is this? Who is he? He has the heart of a tyrant.”

Colonel Woodburn cut in. ”You couldn't do that, Mr. Dryfoos, under your system. And if you attempted it, with your conspiracy laws, and that kind of thing, it might bring the climax sooner than you expected. Your commercialized society has built its house on the sands. It will have to go. But I should be sorry if it went before its time.”

”You are righdt, sir,” said Lindau. ”It would be a bity. I hobe it will last till it feelss its rottenness, like Herodt. Boat, when its hour gomes, when it trope to bieces with the veight off its own gorrubtion--what then?”

”It's not to be supposed that a system of things like this can drop to pieces of its own accord, like the old Republic of Venice,” said the colonel. ”But when the last vestige of commercial society is gone, then we can begin to build anew; and we shall build upon the central idea, not of the false liberty you now wors.h.i.+p, but of responsibility --responsibility. The enlightened, the moneyed, the cultivated cla.s.s shall be responsible to the central authority--emperor, duke, president; the name does not matter--for the national expense and the national defence, and it shall be responsible to the working-cla.s.ses of all kinds for homes and lands and implements, and the opportunity to labor at all times.

”The working-cla.s.ses shall be responsible to the leisure cla.s.s for the support of its dignity in peace, and shall be subject to its command in war. The rich shall warrant the poor against planless production and the ruin that now follows, against danger from without and famine from within, and the poor--”

”No, no, no!” shouted Lindau. ”The State shall do that--the whole beople.

The men who voark shall have and shall eat; and the men that will not voark, they shall sdarfe. But no man need sdarfe. He will go to the State, and the State will see that he haf voark, and that he haf foodt.

All the roadts and mills and mines and landts shall be the beople's and be ron by the beople for the beople. There shall be no rich and no boor; and there shall not be war any more, for what bower wouldt dare to addack a beople bound togeder in a broderhood like that?”

”Lion and lamb act,” said Fulkerson, not well knowing, after so much champagne, what words he was using.

No one noticed him, and Colonel Woodburn said coldly to Lindau, ”You are talking paternalism, sir.”

”And you are dalking feutalism!” retorted the old man.

The colonel did not reply. A silence ensued, which no one broke till Fulkerson said: ”Well, now, look here. If either one of these millenniums was brought about, by force of arms, or otherwise, what would become of 'Every Other Week'? Who would want March for an editor? How would Beaton sell his pictures? Who would print Mr. Kendricks's little society verses and short stories? What would become of Conrad and his good works?” Those named grinned in support of Fulkerson's diversion, but Lindau and the colonel did not speak; Dryfoos looked down at his plate, frowning.

A waiter came round with cigars, and Fulkerson took one. ”Ah,” he said, as he bit off the end, and leaned over to the emblematic masterpiece, where the brandy was still feebly flickering, ”I wonder if there's enough natural gas left to light my cigar.” His effort put the flame out and knocked the derrick over; it broke in fragments on the table. Fulkerson cackled over the ruin: ”I wonder if all Moffitt will look that way after labor and capital have fought it out together. I hope this ain't ominous of anything personal, Dryfoos?”

”I'll take the risk of it,” said the old man, harshly.

He rose mechanically, and Fulkerson said to Frescobaldi's man, ”You can bring us the coffee in the library.”

The talk did not recover itself there. Landau would not sit down; he refused coffee, and dismissed himself with a haughty bow to the company; Colonel Woodburn shook hands elaborately all round, when he had smoked his cigar; the others followed him. It seemed to March that his own good-night from Dryfoos was dry and cold.

VII.

March met Fulkerson on the steps of the office next morning, when he arrived rather later than his wont. Fulkerson did not show any of the signs of suffering from the last night's pleasure which painted themselves in March's face. He flirted his hand gayly in the air, and said, ”How's your poor head?” and broke into a knowing laugh. ”You don't seem to have got up with the lark this morning. The old gentleman is in there with Conrad, as bright as a biscuit; he's beat you down. Well, we did have a good time, didn't we? And old Lindau and the colonel, didn't they have a good time? I don't suppose they ever had a chance before to give their theories quite so much air. Oh, my! how they did ride over us!

I'm just going down to see Beaton about the cover of the Christmas number. I think we ought to try it in three or four colors, if we are going to observe the day at all.” He was off before March could pull himself together to ask what Dryfoos wanted at the office at that hour of the morning; he always came in the afternoon on his way up-town.