Part 12

"Yes, I've figured it out, Lief. You're a terrible liar. When you say you love people, the crowd, you're a terrible liar then. You don't love the crowd at all. What is your love of people but a blind infatuation with yourself? You hate them. Whose humanity are you all the time writing about and singing about? Your own. But you're ashamed to admit that. Sometimes people are ashamed to boast of themselves so they boast of something else they've created in their own image--of their Gods. That's the way you boast of your crowd. You're ashamed to boast of yourself so you fix it up for yourself by giving the virtues you think you've got to people and then singing about them as if you were an altruist and a sympathetic human observer. You're a great liar, Lief. And the thing you love is a lie you make up. Because people are foul. And you know it. They're not like you or me. They can't think even as much as a rat thinks. They're as rattle-brained as chickens, as greedy as vultures. And they lie all the time--good God, how they lie. You hate them too. You know all this better than I do. But you keep feeling things and you imagine they're things people feel. You...."

She stopped and looked at him with a smile. She had started to insult him and had ended by pleading with him. His jaws were working as if he were chewing. This was his anger. But she felt no defeat, nothing but a slight confusion. She was disappointed in herself because she could not recapture the thoughts that had filled her during the month. They had been clear at their inception but now they were mixed up with desires for Lief, with a fear of him. They were mixed up so that out of what she was saying there arose no clear image of Lief and his relation to life or of the crowd and its foulness.

"Why don't you answer what I say?" she asked. "Are you afraid to discuss things you are absorbed in? If people are so wonderful let's talk about them."

She felt a triumph. She had destroyed something. She could tell by his eyes. They were becoming wild and unfixed. If she could be certain of destroying it forever, of killing in him the love for her rival ... then....

"The little finger of one intelligent man is worth the whole of the French revolution," she was saying excitedly. "You're no different from the other cowards who devote themselves to flattering the monster. You know what I mean. The monster rewards liars and flatterers. All you have to do to be great in the eyes of the world is to celebrate the glories of the monster. To make a lickspittle of your genius. It's an old and easy formula. Why don't you think? You stand up with your eyes closed and sing about things that never existed--about the beauty of people and ... and...."

Lindstrum thrust his face close to her. She paused. A desire to laugh came as she stared at the too familiar features of the man. This was the face she had held in her hands and covered with kisses. Nights of passion and adoration had been shared with this face. Now it held itself savagely before her and grew blurred. Something had been destroyed in it. It was no longer familiar. It was somebody else's face....

"People," it said as if it were going to spit at her. "Yes, like you say. Think about them! God damn...."

"Lief," she murmured.

"Don't call me Lief...." He glowered closer.

"Oh! Then you're angry. Well, I didn't expect you to agree." She made her voice tender now. She did not want his face unfamiliar like this as if she had never held it in her hands and covered it with kisses.

But he continued to thrust himself unfamiliarly before her.

"Yes, I agree about the crowd," he answered, his eyes swinging over her head, his jaws still working. "I agree. You got 'em right. Down in the mud of themselves. And me with them, do you hear that! Me singing with 'em. Get me, now. I'm going to tell you."

She moved away from this unfamiliar face but it came closer again.

"I don't want any of your brains. Not for mine. I want to be like I am. This beast you talk about.... That's me. He can't talk or reason.... All right. He won't then. But he'll do something else. He'll live. He'll go on living. Yes," he raised his voice to a shout, "I agree with you. Because I'm the crowd. Do you get that ... you dirty ... you dirty fool ... you...."

The oath brought his passion into his head. His hand clenched and his fist shot into her face. She staggered away from him, calling his name. He watched her fall against a couch. A rage cried in him. He was a liar, was he? And a coward? All right. He was. Look out for all liars and cowards then. He walked toward the couch and stood above her. What did she want of him? She wanted something. Tears filled him. People ... people that sweated and grunted and crawled around like beasts and raised their eyes at night to the stars.... This monster she gabbed about, this thing without hands or eyes. That was it.

She was crying on the couch. All right. Let her. But she was crying because she wanted something.... His hands grabbed her head and straightened her face until their eyes were looking into each other.

"Listen," he said. He was shaking her. "I'm going away."

Eyes watched each other. She looked until the face she had once kissed became entirely strange. There was no Lief, no lover. But a face staring murderously into hers. But there was something else. Tears behind the stare. Why was he weeping? The question like a tiny visitor sat down in her mind.

He let her go and walked from the room, grabbing his hat and coat into his hands as he went.

Doris listened. Down the stairs. Outside. He was gone. She went to the window. Her eye had swelled and her cheek pained. She sat down and looked into the street.

"He hit me," she was whispering to herself. She began to weep with shame. But her tears seemed to soften her heart toward him. He had cried too. She arose and went to the bed. Here she had lain with him. Warm, familiar hours. Here her arms had held him. She threw herself down and wept aloud.

II.

13.

George Basine was going to see his sister Doris. In the nine years since she had left her mother's home she had become a strange woman to Basine. She had always been strange to him. But now it was as if she were entirely unhuman.

He could talk to her without shame of things that were shameful. But there was something more tangible in her presence than the joy of being able to confess things to her. She was practical in her ideas. She gave him hunches for his speeches sometimes and what she said about people and how to make an impression on them was always of value. She understood such things. How, he couldn't determine. It was probably an instinct with her.

Basine walked along in the spring afternoon. It was Sunday and he should have stayed home. Henrietta had been angry when he left. Sunday was his day for her and the two children. There were two children now--one a boy of seven, and a girl of five.

But he said, "I want to see Doris. She's been feeling rather off lately. And if you don't believe I'm going there, why just call up in an hour. And keep on calling every hour if you want to keep check on me."

He was always angry with his wife when he left her. She made him feel that he was doing wrong, although she seldom said anything. But to go away and leave her on Sunday was wrong. But not for the reasons she sometimes hinted at.

He knew that she suspected his frequent absences from the house. He accused her of hounding him with her jealousy, and the knowledge of his innocence--he had never been unfaithful during the eight years of their marriage--made him angry. The elation of righteous anger in which he indulged himself on all occasions involving Henrietta, was a ruse which obscured for both himself and his wife the actual reasons of his absences. She bored him to a point of fury. His children and their endless noises and questionings set his nerves on edge. He fled in order to escape his home. But Henrietta hinted that he left her for someone else. And he denied this hotly. And in the excitement which accusation and denial aroused both of them managed to avoid facing the fact that he stayed away for no other reason than to escape the boredom of her presence and discomfort of his home.

Basine was careful to avoid this fact. It was incompatable with his ideas. He had become a man of belligerent righteousness. He was slowly emerging as a public figure. As an assistant in the state's attorney's office his political activities were attracting more attention than his legal work. He was in demand as a campaign orator. And the candidates in whose behalf he addressed the public were men, he pointed out with an air of fearlessness, who believed first of all that the home was the cornerstone of civilization.

"He is a man worth while," he would declaim, "a capable administrator. But first of all our candidate is like you and me. His heart is centered in his home. The greatest rewards life holds for him are not the offices we are able to bestow on him but the love of his wife and children."

Since his marriage which from the first had irritated him and then set his teeth on edge, he had devoted himself seemingly to a public idealization of his own predicament.

Nine years had brought changes in Basine. He had grown leaner. His face had sharpened into hawk lines. There was about him at thirty-four, an aristocratic pugnaciousness. Fearlessness was a word which was gradually attaching itself to his name. He was fearless, people said. His lean body and unphysical air contributed to their decision.

When he appeared publicly people saw a wiry-bodied man past thirty with an amazing determination about him. His words snapped out, his eyes flashed as he talked. And his talk was usually alive with denunciations. He denounced enemies of the people and ideas that were enemies.

During the minor campaigns for aldermen, state's attorney and the judiciary elections in which he had been employed by his party leaders, he had created a slight newspaper stir. The public had quickly sensed in him an interesting character.

And then, although he was years working toward this end, he had suddenly leaped forward as a champion of their rights. He had become one of the select group of indomitable Davids striding fearlessly forth to do battle with the Goliaths that threatened. And there were always Goliaths threatening. Insidious Goliaths; shrewd, merciless Goliaths continually on the verge of opening their terrible maws and devouring the rights of the public.

Basine was coming forward as a champion consecrated to the slaying of Goliaths. Not only during campaigns, which, of course, was the open season for Goliath-slaying, but between campaigns, behind closed doors where nobody saw, in the bosom of his family. He never removed his armor or rather, never laid aside his holy slingshot. He was always locked in a death struggle with new and unsuspected Goliaths--this wiry, fearless man who was beginning to cry out in the newspapers ... "The enemies of the public must be overthrown. It matters not who they are or in what camp they are. The city must be cleaned up."

Following the failure of several private banks in the cosmopolitan district of the city, Basine had leaped forward against this new Goliath. This had been his first major offensive.

Private banks were threatening the peace of the public. He had made several speeches before business men's associations denouncing private banks and private bankers. He had declared with utter disregard of personal or political consequences that they were a menace--that they were sharks swimming in the waters of finance--and that he would not rest until the public had been made safe against their predatory, merciless jaws.

He was on this Sunday morning in the midst of the fight against private banks. The excitement had started with the failure of a small banking institution on the west side. The newspapers had carried the usual stories of weeping depositors and heartbroken working people whose life-time savings had been swept away in the crash. Basine had overlooked the stories in the papers. Doris had called them to his attention. He had been sitting in her studio.... Here was something worth while. Why didn't he start a campaign against private banks. There was always agitation, but as yet not a big campaign.

When he left her the thing had already matured in his mind. He wondered why she had laughed during the discussion of the possibilities of such a campaign. He remembered her saying with a sneer, "That's the sort of thing the crowd eats up. The trouble with you George, is that you haven't learned the trick of frightening the mob. You can't be a leader unless you frighten them first and then leap out to defend them. The menace of private banks is something to frighten them with. Start a crusade."

That was it--a crusade. Movements and reforms were all very well. But they were slow work. In order to advance one had to attach oneself to tidal waves. Doris was right about frightening them.

Within a week he had launched his attack. He had developed a technique in his public utterances which was becoming more and more unconscious and so more and more convincing. Once determined that a crusade against private banks would be a step in his upward climb, his cynicism in the matter vanished. He investigated the subject thoroughly, filling his mind with statistics. Events played into his hands. A second private bank collapsed at the end of the week and Basine knew that the ground was ready for his crusade.

He began not with an attack against the institution of private banks, but shelving the statistics he had carefully mastered, he concentrated upon creating a sense of terror in the public mind. In statements given out to the press and in speeches before business men's associations which were also reported in the newspapers, he pounded on the note of menace. They were a menace. They were something to be afraid of. They jeopardized stability. They were wildcat institutions.

It was his first crusade and he waited nervously for the response. The response came after a pause of a week like an answering shout. Down with private banks! A conflagration of headlines flared up. The people were against private banks. Editorials heralded the fact. The newspapers were against private banks. A week ago private banks had been the furthest topic from the public conversation. Now it became a matter of violent discussion. Citizens committees were being formed for the purpose of fighting private banks.

Feeling began to run high. Very high. A neighborhood Polish financier who for years had conducted a small banking institution was mobbed on his way to work and rescued from the violence of the crowd, which threatened his life by the arrival of police. This incident was reported by the newspapers as revealing the determination of the men seeking to wipe out the menace of the private bank and also as revealing the unscrupulous power of the men engaged in the private banking business.

The growing clamor against the institution resulted naturally in the collapse of two more small banks whose depositors, terrified by reports they themselves were circulating, rushed to withdraw their savings.

Basine contemplating the extent of the public indignation felt a pride and a misgiving. He glowed with the thought that he, Basine, had started the thing. His name had from the beginning figured prominently in connection with the growing crusade.... "Basine Denounces Private Banks...." had started it. And then a flood of headlines, "Banking Sharks Prey on poor, says Basine."... And then "Basine Flays Private Bankers at Mass Meeting...." "Private Bank Menace Growing...."

He had kept his head during the publicity and, unaccountably, his thought had turned to his sister as the crusade gathered momentum, as the "menace grew." Although alive with a powerful indignation against the enemy, Basine remained mentally aloof in contemplating the situation. His aloofness was not a cynicism but a guide.

He studied the fact that the clamor was in the main artificial. The menace of the private bank was a thing that touched less than one per-cent of the population. There were no more than thirty such minor institutions in the city and more than two-thirds of these were as sound as the banks under government supervision. His statistics had revealed this.

Nevertheless in some mysterious way the phrase "private bank" had become synonymous with ogre, villainy, menace, calamity. His original denunciations published rather casually by the press had been a species of newspaper feelers. The public had responded. Realizing then that the subject was a live one, the papers had cut loose. The idea of a trusted public institution being a danger and a menace to the community was quick in awaking a sense of alarm. A sense of fear inspired by no facts but by the reiterative rhetoric of the press swept the city.

Basine for several days sought futilely to understand the phenomenon of this fear. It seemed almost as if people were filled with constant though innate fear of the things they trusted. A man named Levine whom he had met at Doris' explained it that way. He had listened to the man talk: ... "The reason people turn on their trusted institutions with such fury is simple. When a platitude they have blindly upheld seems about to betray them they fall on it and tear it to pieces. This is because a platitude is kept alive blindly and it must be destroyed blindly. When a platitude commits the offense of becoming obviously, too obviously, a lie or an incipient danger, people are of course overcome with the horrible doubt that all platitudes are lies and dangers. This general suspicion which overcomes them, this wholesale fear or panic which sweeps over them, they let out, of course, on the one platitude. By viciously denouncing the one platitude they manage to assure themselves that all the others are all right. They sort of lose their general terror in an unnatural but specific hysteria. And they always turn themselves into an overfed elephant jumping furiously up and down and trumpeting terribly--at a mouse."

Basine carried this explanation away. He allowed it to linger in his mind without thinking of it. He knew that the fear was unwarranted and yet the excitement had taken on the proportions of a public uprising. The editorials of the press became couched more and more in grandiloquent languages, reminiscent of Biblical passages. In fact a religious fervor had entered the clamor. The overthrow of the private bank was a mission of righteousness--an integral part of the higher Christianity of the nation--to say nothing of the dreams of its forefathers.

With this growing and exalted anger, a new phenomenon struck Basine. It was the strange myth that had sprung up seemingly overnight of the power of the private banks. He knew from his study of the facts that the private bankers of the city were a handful of haphazard, third rate financiers without prestige in the courts or pull in the politics of the state. Their total holdings represented a slight fraction of the money tied up in the banking business of the city. They had no standing comparable with the standing of the supervised banks. The big interests including the men of power in the city were against them and they were, as a matter of fact, a puny by-product of the city's intricate finance.

Yet now they had become an insidiously entrenched monster. Public men of affairs vied with each other in revealing the mysterious power of the private bank. And Basine was left to marvel in silence over the fact that the wilder the public frenzy against private bankers became, the huger and more difficult to overthrow were the private bankers made out to be.

His pride as author of the crusade began however to be colored with misgivings. Others had risen to challenge him for the leadership of the movement. Stern, fearless men, as stern and fearless as himself, were offering to sacrifice themselves on the altars of freedom. The altars of freedom, the press explained, were the battleground of the fight against private banks.

The public's attention was being distracted from Basine. Men of greater prestige than he had hurled themselves into the death struggle. These great ones were more qualified than Basine for leadership. They were older and of deeper experience in the slaying of Goliaths. Now it seemed that perhaps one of them and not George Basine was the hero who would be able to overthrow this latest menace to the public weal.

Basine's misgivings took the form of an irritation. He sensed the fickleness of the public and understood that it could turn from him who had started the whole thing and give its adulation to some other leader who had jumped on the band-wagon and crowded Basine off the driver's seat. His cynicism returned as he read the denunciations his rivals were hurling at private banks.

"A pack of fools and fourflushers," he muttered to himself and their words--paraphrases of his original denunciations for the most part--nauseated him. The word "bunk" crept into his thought as he read their speeches and interviews. He would like to stop the whole thing, to stand up and say it was all a tempest in a teapot and that there was no menace or ogre or Goliath; that the whole thing was made out of whole cloth. Then the entire business would collapse and the men threatening him for the leadership would be left high and dry.

... Doris looked up as he entered. She was a silent-looking woman. Her face wore its pallor like a mask. She greeted her brother without expression. Her luxurious body seemed without life, her hands gesturing as if they were weighted. The sensuous outlines of her which brought to mind the odalisques of Titian found a startling contrast in the immobility of her manners. She was thirty and in the half-lighted room she seemed like a beautiful, burning-eyed paralytic.

"Tired?" her brother asked as he sat down.

This was of late his usual greeting. She looked tired always, and until she began to talk, she looked as if she were dumb or blind. But when she talked her eyes lighted.

She shook her head to his question. He had come filled with troubles and confessions but her black eyes, centered on him, disturbed him. He had become used to the sardonic weariness of her face. But there were times when he felt as if something were happening to her that he couldn't understand. Her eyes would burn and seem to shut him out as if she could look at him without seeing him.

Her complete inanimation startled him. He knew he could sit talking all night and she would never move nor ask a question. Long ago she had been a little like that. Never asking questions but sitting among others as if she were alone. But now it was more marked. There was something wrong with Doris. What she needed was to go out more. She was getting too self-centered, brooding too much.

Basine, as he sat studying the window and the profile of his sister, kept remembering how she used to be. That was years ago when they had all lived at home. And this poet Lindstrum whom everybody was talking about, used to call on her. She had been in love with him. But that was long ago--eight, nine, ten years ago. It couldn't be that. And it couldn't be that she was "in trouble," because she had been like this for years now. He remembered her youth. Her silence then had been different. It had been alive. And now she sat around like a corpse and if it wasn't for her eyes moving occasionally you might think her actually dead. Sometimes this thought did frighten him as he sat watching her. She was dead! He would restrain himself from jumping up to see and sit listening to hear her breathe.