Charlie Carroll whispered to Hennion as they came out of the cemetery:
“It's all right. The boys are satisfied.”
“Why are they?”
“They'd be scared not to do what Wood said now. It wouldn't go down.”
“Go down where?”
“Well, they seem to like the idea too. They will have it.”
But why should he be congratulated over a prospective invitation from “the boys” to labour in their interests? He was not sure why he had not already refused, by what subconscious motive or scruple. Properly there should be scruples about accepting. The leadership of the organisation was an unsalaried position, with vague perquisites. Wood had taken honorariums and contributions, spent what he chose on the organisation, and kept what he chose. Apparently he had not kept much, if any. He had seemed to care only for influence. He had liked the game. He had left only a small estate. But whether he had kept or passed it on, the money was called unclean.
If one went into politics to effect something—and Hennion could not imagine why one went into anything otherwise—the leadership of the organisation seemed to be the effective point. The city had a set of chartered machinery, ineffectually chartered to run itself; also certain subsets of unchartered machinery. It voted now and then which of the subsets should be allowed to slip on its belt. The manner in which the chartered machinery was run depended somewhat on the expedients that were needed to keep the unchartered machinery going. There must be dynamics and mechanics in all that machinery. To an engineer's criticism it seemed oddly complicated. There must be a big waste. But almost any machine, turning heat force into motion, wasted sixty per cent. Still these sets and subsets seemed loosely geared. It looked like an interesting problem in engineering, that had been met rather experimentally. As mechanics, it seemed to be all in an experimental stage. Hennion wondered if there were any text-books on the subject, and then pulled himself up with a protest.
What did politics want of an engineer and a business man? As an engineer and a business man, he had been asking something of politics, to be sure, but he had only asked it in the way of business. In his father's time politics had called for lawyers. Nowadays lawyers too were mainly a class of business men. If political machinery had any dynamic and mechanic laws, they must be original. Those who succeeded in running it seemed to succeed by a kind of amateur, hand-to-mouth common sense.
Wood had been an interesting man. After all, he might have been as important in his way as Henry Champney had been. If you were talking of the dynamics of politics, you were estimating men as forces.